Tag Archives: Iridium Next

Cambridge, Ontario based exactEarth has had a bit of a bumpy ride after being spun-off from COM DEV in 2015 and being publicly listed in January 2016.

Now that all of its aircraft surveillance receivers have launched as hosted payloads on the Iridium Next satellite constellation, Aireon is within months of going live with a game changing service.

SpaceX’s first launch of the year, the Iridium-8 mission, has big implications for air traffic worldwide – including in Canada.

While exactEarth’s chief executive remains coy about how the “strategic alternative” search is going, he says the Earth observation company picked its timing carefully to look at a possible sale, merger or other activity to maximize shareholder value.

On January 14th of this year, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched the first 10 satellites of the Iridium Next satellite constellation. This coming Sunday another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch, with the next 10 satellites in the constellation to be deployed.

SpaceX and its customers can breathe a sigh of relief today after an instantaneous launch went off without a glitch. The Falcon 9 lifted off at 12:54 p.m. EST and began deploying the first of 10 Iridium satellites 59 minutes later.  At 2:13 p.m. EST SpaceX reported that all of the Iridium satellites had been deployed successfully.

Today at 12:54 p.m. EST, SpaceX should return to flight with the launch of a Falcon 9 on the Iridium 1 mission, if all goes well. There’s a lot riding on this mission, and not just for SpaceX.