Plan-S, Turkey’s leading, private initiative in the satellite and space technologies industry, took a selfie from space (see image above, courtesy of the company) of their Connecta satellite.
Türkiye’s fast-growing space company was established in 2021 and completed its first satellite, Connecta T1.1, within eight months after the company’s establishment and launched it with SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter 5 Mission.
The second satellite of Plan-S, Connecta T1.2, is a test platform in the company’s roadmap toward direct-to-satellite, IoT connectivity solution This satellite, which was developed and integrated within 5 months, has a software-defined radio (SDR) as an IoT payload. All development, integration, and qualification processes of Connecta T1.2 are completed by Plan-S Team. The main purpose of Plan-S is to test IoT waveform designs using this in-orbit test platform. As a special surprise, Plan-S Team also added a selfie-cam payload, making it the first selfie-cam Earth Observation (EO) for Turkish space industry.
The successful launch of Plan-S’s two satellites is a major step forward for the space industry in Türkiye’s and beyond. In near future, the third satellite, Connecta T2.1, will be launched by SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter 7 Mission and is a 6U satellite with high-resolution EO and on-board processing payloads. Connecta T2.1 is a test platform using Dragonfly Aerospace Caiman multi-spectral camera and satellite subsystems of Plan-S. Connecta T2.1 will be the first step toward having a constellation of many satellites in LEO with high-resolution multispectral cameras. Moreover, this will be a major step for Plan-S to combine its satellite-based IoT solutions with EO data.
Plan-S is a satellite-IoT service provider in Turkey and will be covering Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East for sectors that include transport, finance, energy, meteorology, aviation, and agriculture.