BRO-6 and BRO-7, the sixth and seventh satellites of Unseenlabs’ constellation dedicated to the geolocation of vessels at sea, will be launched to meet the needs of a growing demand for space-based RF. Unseenlabs owns the world’s most developed fleet of independent satellites1 for RF signals detection. The French company has been fully operational since 2019, and provides RF information to its public and private clients. The two satellites will be launched this month [April 2022] with two different launchers: Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket and SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
Unseenlabs offers a new solution it says is essential for a better understanding of human activities at sea. Nowadays, ships at sea are equipped with many electronic systems emitting electromagnetic signals for navigational aid (NAVAID), and to improve security on board. The Unseenlabs’ constellation specifically detects, characterizes and geolocalizes these RF signals coming from a wide range of emitters. It covers sea areas of hundreds of thousands square kilometers.
Unseenlabs processes and analyzes this RF data, and provides unique knowledge for national security operations, for environmental protection and for an increasing number of applications in the commercial sector. The constellation is designed to provide data to clients to follow maritime traffic, regardless of the time of day and weather conditions.
“Expanding our satellite fleet is an important step to provide a better service for our clients from all around the world, and to give more power and value to our RF technology”, Clément Galic, CEO and cofounder at Unseenlabs, says. “The newest satellites add essential capabilities to the Unseenlabs’ constellation, allowing for additional solutions and deeper analyses for our clients.”
“We are planning to extend the constellation up to 20 satellites. The aim is to achieve an almost permanent maritime surveillance of RF activities worldwide.” Jonathan Galic, CTO and cofounder at Unseenlabs, says. “Our constellation is at the top of the commercial sector regarding RF intelligence. Thanks to these newest satellites, we will offer data and information more frequently to our government and commercial partners. We wanted to say how much we are grateful to our partners for these missions − Exolaunch, SpaceX and Rocket Lab – who work with our team and make our launchings possible.”