The Portuguese company LusoSpace is developing a constellation of 12 microsatellites to monitor maritime traffic, with a communication system between ships, a project budgeted at around 20 million euros, as announced on Tuesday.
The constellation of microsatellites will be financed with 10 million euros by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) within the framework of the “New Space Portugal Agenda”, which “aims to transform the specialization profile of the Portuguese space sector with new innovative, exportable and technologically complex products and services”.
The Lisbon company received a visit on Tuesday from the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Elvira Fortunato, within the framework of the government initiative “PRR em Movimento”.
LusoSpace is in the microsatellite design phasebut, according to the executive director, Ivo Yves Vieira, will be prepared to “throw an assembly line” of satellites, including those of other companies.
In statements to Lusa, after the minister’s visit, Ivo Yves Vieira said that the first of the microsatellites will be sent into space in 2024 and the others in mid-2025, without advancing from where they will be launched.
The small satellites will be equipped with technology that will allow not only the location of ships at sea, but also the sending of weather alerts and distress messages between ships.
According to Ivo Yves Vieira, microsatellites like these will be useful in the future for autonomous maritime navigation.
During the visit to LusoSpace, the president of the Portuguese space agency Portugal Space, Ricardo Conde, said, without specifying where the microsatellites will be launched, that the company’s project will be “aligned with the maturity time” of the Santa Maria spaceport. , in the Azores, works under the responsibility of the Regional Government and has known several setbacks, including the challenge of the tender.
Initially, when it was announced that it would be a launch base for microsatellites, the Santa Maria spaceport should have started operating in the summer of 2021.
Source: Observadora
