KSAT passed a new milestone by providing 52 000 passes in the month of March. The high number of passes originates from another record-breaking event, as KSAT provided launch support for 50 satellites in just one week.
The KSAT network is expanding constantly, so far this year eight new antennas are already installed and ready for operations across several sites. This means the capacity for the customers is increasing, and that the number of passes will continue to grow also in the months to come.
– A few years ago, 10 000 passes in one month was a big happening. Now we expect 52 000 to be the new standard and that we will grow from there. We see growth in all areas of our ground network business, however there is no doubt that the activity in the commercial smallsat market is evolving at an accelerated pace, Tor Espen Lynum, director Engineering says.
This is reflected in the current traffic on our KSATlite network, the KSAT ground network optimised for SmallSats and big constellations where we experienced a doubling of the amount of passes in just 6 months in 2020. Building new antennas on several sites have contributed to this, as well as better timeliness and even more efficient operations.
– We have several systems up and running simultaneously ensuring the redundancy our customers require. We are seeing an increase across all sites and all customer segments, and we are happy to see the expansion and increased traffic on some of our strategic sites such as Troll in Antarctica and Punta Arenas in Chile, Lynum adds.
KSAT expects that the increased traffic will last, and that we will see a continuation of this growth in number of passes in the coming year.