OQ Technology Group has launched two, new, LEO satellites — TIGER-7 and TIGER-8 built by Nanoavionics — aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket rideshare mission Transporter-10 — this comes after three months from the successful launch of the Tiger-5 and 6 satellites on Transporter-9.
The two satellites separated successfully from the upper stage of the rocket and were deployed into orbit 57 minutes post launch. Both satellites are 6U sized smallsats carrying “cell tower” NB-IoT payloads. Contact with both satellites has been established few hours after launch using Nanoavioncis ground station in Vilnus.
The two satellites join OQ 5G NTN IoT satellite constellation which has a total now of 10 satellites. This concludes the OQ Technology LEO batch-1 satellites of for the firm’s constellation. The company has been on a fast track to launch many satellites since last year to complete its batch 1 that can provide global narrowband IoT coverage to many clients and applications.
The 5G satellite market has been growing rapidly with many users shifting from proprietary solutions to standard 3GPP protocols. OQ is a front runner globally in offering LEO satellite narrowband communication for machines and the internet of things. The company has already provided Satellite NTN connectivity to oil and gas customers and is expanding into other verticals such as agriculture and maritime.
Omar Qaise, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of OQ Technology, said, “We are very happy of this milestone which was a corner milestone of our 2022 Series-A fundraise: Putting 10 satellites in orbit to have good level of coverage anywhere in the world. We are ready now to acquire more customers and grow our revenue and prepare the launch of our batch-2 satellites, OQ is the fastest growing and largest LEO NTN NB-IoT 3GPP standard satellite constellation.”