Satellite company Iceye US in Irvine is looking forward to an active year for spacecraft launches after a recent liftoff, and the company has received a contract from one of the major U.S. intelligence agencies.
Iceye specializes in spacecraft that can see through clouds, bad weather and night. Iceye works with the U.S. government and the military, as well as with commercial companies such as insurance companies assessing storm damage.
“We are currently planning on launching 10 or more spacecraft this year,” said Jerry Welsh, the chief executive of the local unit.
Those launched will be a combination of satellites built in Irvine and in Finland, where parent company Iceye is based. The global satellite company uses components it makes, as well as those made by third parties.
The launches are made on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets.
“We’ll continue to grow the business in line with the demand and the services that we’re providing here in the U.S.,” Welsh said, calling the market “very significant.”
For 2022, the Irvine unit plans to grow the team in OC, and open an office in the Washington, D.C. area, he said.
Inaugural Launch
Iceye US launched a domestically built craft earlier this month, as one of a pair of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. SAR refers to satellites that can produce images despite bad weather and at night.
The company said Jan. 13 that this month’s liftoff marks the first launch of a satellite built by its Irvine facility, which was opened in March of last year.
The newly launched satellite is licensed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and is being operated and controlled from the company’s Mission Operations Center in Irvine.
In total, Iceye has now deployed 16 satellites since 2018, including both commercial and dedicated customer missions, growing what it calls the largest SAR satellite constellation in space.
The constellation—or group of satellites—is designed to provide customers with reliable and frequent imagery enabling the rapid detection and tracking of changes on the Earth’s surface, regardless of time of day, or weather conditions.
This capability is suited for applications such as insurance, natural catastrophe response and recovery, national security, defense, humanitarian relief and climate change monitoring.
The company said it delivers “persistent’’ monitoring capabilities for any location on Earth. Its data can be collected day or night, and even through cloud cover.
The company’s satellites are small, each weighing about 220 pounds.
NRO Contract
In another development, Iceye US said Jan. 20 it had received a contract with the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO. The contract enables the company to participate in the NRO’s evaluation of commercial remote sensing companies operating SAR satellites.
With a focus on modeling and simulation, Iceye said it will support NRO’s detailed assessment of imaging modes, image quality, geolocation accuracy and coverage among other important technical parameters.
