Warpspace has established a subsidiary — Warpspace Europe GmbH (Warpspace Europe) — in Frankfurt, Germany.
With this establishment, Warpspace now has three bases, including its headquarters in Japan and a branch office in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Warpspace Europe will function as a development center.
Warpspace is working with several European partners to manufacture the satellite bus that will initially make up WarpHub InterSat, an inter-satellite, optical communications, network service. Having an engineering team in Europe will further accelerate collaboration with each EU-based partner company.
Europe, like Japan, has a long history of R&D in optical inter-satellite communication technology through public-private partnerships, such as the collaboration in the past on the demonstration of Japan’s OICETS (Kirari). With this background, Warpspace Europe will also serve as a base for exploring collaboration with governments and companies in European countries.
Hiromitsu Azuma, CEO and Representative Director, said, “In recent years, new space development and business has been based on the importance of keeping abreast of international trends and developing business in a flexible and precise manner. Europe is home to many companies and institutions that are skilled in optical communication technology, as well as technology and human resources that have been cultivated in the course of playing an important role in international space development, not only in Japan but also in cooperation with the United States and NASA over the years. In order to realize our vision as early as possible and to be on par with the rest of the world, it is essential that we not only cherish the technologies that Japan has cultivated, but also integrate the technologies that have been honed in Europe and the United States, respectively. We will continue to communicate closely with our partners, as we do in Japan, to ensure that the activities of the three bases are smoothly linked, with the aim of establishing highly reliable technologies and services at the earliest possible time.”
Warpspace is developing “WarpHub InterSat”, the world’s first commercial optical near real-time communication network service for LEO satellites. Three relay satellites capable of optical communications will transmit data sent from other satellites to ground stations in an immediate and high-capacity manner. This service is expected to be available by 2025. In recent years, the number of satellites for Earth observation has been increasing exponentially. WarpHub InterSat will make it possible to acquire and use more Earth observation data in near real-time, thereby contributing to the realization of a sustainable global economy by speeding up disaster response and improving the efficiency of resource management.