Enlarge / Greg Wyler in February 2019 when he was at OneWeb. (credit: Getty Images | Washington Post)
A company led by satellite-industry veteran Greg Wyler says it plans to launch about 100, 000 small communication satellites into low Earth orbit. The company, E-Space, yesterday announced that it received a $50 million investment and that it will launch its first test satellites next month, with “mass production… slated for 2023. ”
E-Space said it has “filings in hand for potentially over 100, 000 secure communication satellites, ” but there are suggestions that the company wants to launch over 300, 000 satellites. Prime Movers Lab, which led the $50 million investment round, said that E-Space’s network will have “up to hundreds of thousands of secure communication satellites” and described the devices as “micro-satellites. ”
E-Space said its platform will “help governments and large companies build space-based applications in a capital-light manner” for uses “ranging from secure communications to managing remote infrastructure. ” E-Space says its satellites will use a peer-to-peer communication model, and the company’s website describes the plan as a “multi-application cloud server in space… powered by E-Space’s rapidly scalable optical 5G mesh network. ”
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