Ground-breaking ‘Space Infrastructure As a Service’ provider Loft Orbital is partnering with LEO communication specialist Addvalue to offer rapid, secure and simplified access to space, enhanced by always available end-user access. As part of this partnership, Loft Orbital has procured multiple Inter-satellite Data Relay Systems (IDRS™). The first Loft Orbital program to feature IDRS is YAM-6, which will launch in Q4 2023. IDRS provides Loft Orbital’s customers with constant connectivity to their missions, allowing them to benefit from real-time tasking, increased responsiveness, and highly secure data collection via Inmarsat’s exceptionally reliable ELERA L-band geostationary (GEO) satellite network, free from the limitations of earth station scheduling.

Loft Orbital makes space simple by flying customer missions as a service onboard its own standardized satellite platforms. By combining mass-manufactured commodity satellite buses from active production lines with its Hub, a universal interface for payload accommodation and operations, Loft Orbital provides customers with rapid and turnkey mission deployments.

The installation of IDRS™ across Loft Orbital’s fleet of satellite platforms unlocks enhanced, on-demand connectivity for the customer payloads housed on these flight-proven satellite buses. Loft Orbital’s customers will no longer be limited by communication session duration or frequency, opening up a significant competitive advantage and ​​new market opportunities by removing limitations on data collection and payload control.

Co-founder and COO of Loft Orbital Alex Greenberg explains, “IDRS expands our service offering by enabling constant access to our satellite infrastructure. Combined with our edge compute capabilities, in which we provide an onboard environment for flying our customers’ software applications, IDRS enables our platform to address a wide range of tactical and real-time uses cases for satellite data. In line with our strategy of bulk procuring hardware and holding it in inventory to enable truly off-the-shelf access to space, we have procured multiple IDRS flight models.”

Ground-breaking IDRS™ removes much of the need for earth station scheduling, which complicates payload management and typically restricts data flow from low earth orbit satellites. The space-proven IDRS™ solution supports payload access via “always on” 24/7 data connection and transfer services with LEO satellites across all orbital inclinations, up to altitudes of 1000 km via the Inmarsat ELERA satellite network, which operates at 36000 km.

Tan Khai Pang, CEO of Addvalue, commented, “We’re honored to be working with Loft Orbital to provide real-time “always on” access comms for their space condominium customers. By drawing on our proven experience using Inmarsat technology to drive our real-time IDRS™ data relay solution, we can help Loft Orbital customers reliably simplify their payload management.”

”Inmarsat is delighted to be the provider of the communications link for Loft Orbital space condominium customers,” said Todd McDonell, President of Inmarsat Global Government. “Inmarsat’s ELERAgeostationary satellites and global ground network enable command and control of the orbital transfer vehicles in real time via the Addvalue IDRS™ “always on” link. This ensures that Loft Orbital can deliver time-critical and reliable service to its customers – tenants aboard its fleet of LEO condominium satellites.”