Iridium has secured a $30 million research and development contract with the United States Army to develop a payload which will support the concept of a rapidly deployable small satellite constellation, with the goal of providing more effective data transmission to the soldiers in the field.
The payload will be hosted by another Low Earth Orbit commercial satellite constellation and used alongside Iridium’s existing network. Although the partner is not yet announced, it could include mega-constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink, Amazon’s upcoming Project Kuiper, or satellites of the OneWeb and ViaSat constellations.