Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich / EPA
NASA’s SpaceX Europa mission, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, takes off from Launch Complex 39A, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX will launch the first Portuguese commercial satellite into space, which is part of a project that will create an innovative communications system — a “kind of Twitter of the oceans” — and a new type of service that will be “Waze of the oceans.”
The launch of PoSAT-2the first Portuguese commercial satellite, is scheduled for January 16th at the Vandenberg Space Base, in California, USA.
This satellite, which was named after the first to reach space in 1993 – PoSAT-1 – is part of a project that aims to “develop a satellite constellation for maritime communications for ships”, as explained to Ivo Yves Vieira, the executive director of the company responsible, .
PoSAT-2 will be transported into space by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockettycoon Elon Musk’s space exploration company.
After the launch of the first of the satellites of the future space constellation, 11 more will be launched by the end of 2025, or beginning of 2026, Económico also found.
Satellite constellation will create “Twitter of the oceans”
“There have been other satellites in the past, but this will be the first commercial Portuguese satellite, which will create revenue from an economic point of view”, says Ivo Yves Vieira to the aforementioned newspaper. “Come on sell the data to companies“, use.
The LusoSpace project, which is part of the NewSpace Portugal consortium, involves a investment of 15 million euros and was led by the so-called ““, Fernando Carvalho Rodrigues.
“These are satellites that allow, on the one hand, to receive the position of ships and distribute them throughout the community, in order to avoid collisions and create services around this”, explains Ivo Yves Vieira.
“But we will also have a innovative servicewhich is a maritime communication service” that “allows you to send short messages”, adds the executive director, simplifying that it will be “a kind of Twitter of the oceans“.
And also the “Waze of the oceans”
On the other hand, the satellite constellation will also allow “create the Waze of the oceans“, says the same person responsible, highlighting that it will enable access to “meteorological information, weather, tides, the seabed, pirate sightings, emergencies, oil spills”.
“Through this system, we will create a new type of service innovative worldwide“, concludes Ivo Yves Vieira.
Still in January 2025, another Portuguese satellite, the Prometheusan “experimental and academic” project at the University of Minho.
