Kepler Communications, the Toronto based satellite telecommunications company, has 13 satellites in low Earth Orbit including eight launched on January 24th of this year. Documents filed with US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) state that they could launch over 24 more satellites this year.
In particular, their Orbital Debris Assessment Report (ODAR) filed with the FCC and which was updated on August 19, 2020 outlines 10 launch mission milestones indicating how many satellites have launched and are anticipated to launch including launch dates. We’ve updated the list with launch dates for missions since completed.
- Launch 1: January 19, 2018 – 1 satellite (launched)
- Launch 2: November 29, 2018 – 1 satellite (launched)
- Launch 3: September 2, 2020 – 1 satellite (launched)
- Launch 4: September 28, 2020 – 2 satellites (launched)
- Launch 5: No earlier than Nov. 2020 – 2 satellites (delayed to March 20, 2021)
- Launch 6: January 24, 2021 – 8 satellites (launched) (Was listed as 8-10 satellites)
- Launch 7: No earlier than Feb 2021 – 2+ satellite
- Launch 8: No earlier than June 2021 – 2+ satellite
- Launch 9: No earlier than July 2021 – 4+ satellite
- Launch 10: No earlier than Dec 2021 – 12+ satellite
Launch 5 with two Kepler satellites onboard, Kepler-6 and Kepler-7, will be with Russian GK Launch Services on a Soyuz-2.1a/Fregat rideshare mission which was delayed from last September and which is now scheduled for March 20, 2021. After this launch Kepler will have 15 satellites on-orbit including its three demonstration satellites. Earlier this week Kepler tweeted pictures of Kepler-6 and Kepler-7 being prepared for shipment.
While Kepler had previously confirmed with SpaceQ the upcoming March launch, they would not go into details on launches in the second half of the year.
However, as the FCC documents of last August indicate, they had plans to launch an additional 20 satellites in 2021. There’s also another 2 satellites to add for the delayed launch 5 and possibly another 2 that did not launch on launch 6. So in total, Kepler could launch 24 or more satellites this year.
While we don’t know who will be providing the launch for all potential 24 satellites, we do know that Kepler has a launch contract with SpaceX and could have several satellites on the upcoming SpaceX Transporter-2 mission scheduled for June.
Kepler’s initial constellation will have 140 satellites. By the end of this year Kepler could have 30% or more of its constellation deployed.