Finnish company Iceye, operator of a constellation of satellites with a synthesized aperture (SAR), and the Japanese aerospace and defense corporation IHI Corporation recently signed an agreement to create a constellation of Earth observation satellites for the security needs of the civil and commercial sectors. IHI Corporation has ordered four satellites and the corresponding image acquisition system from Iceye. According to the terms of the agreement, in the future, the Japanese company has the right to purchase even up to 20 additional satellites. Phased commissioning of the first satellites for IHI Corporation and data delivery should begin around April 2026 year.
To date, Iceye has produced 57 satellites, over 30 of which are part of the company's own constellation, and the rest of the devices were either sold to customers, or removed from orbit. The headquarters of the company is located in Finland, and in Warsaw (Poland) it has a powerful operational management center, engineering, research and development, where production is also partially carried out. The main task of the Polish subsidiary is the round-the-clock management of the entire Iceye constellation. Companions, which will be developed for IHI Corporation, will also be managed from the Warsaw hub.
Iceye satellites of the Gen4 generation have a resolution of up to 16 cm, work in range 1200 MHz and provide a data transfer rate of approx 700 Mbps. The Gen4 instruments set a new standard for SAR satellite performance with a high resolution area width 400 km, which allows for more images in one flight and a higher frequency of repeated shots, providing the world's highest quality commercial SAR imagery. One such satellite is capable of doing up to 500 images per day, and to 50% of them can be concentrated within a 2000-kilometer strip for one orbital flight. An Iceye executive recently noted, that the company is preparing to expand its scope of activity in two more directions: electro-optical Earth observation satellites and radio technical reconnaissance satellites (SIGINT).
Source: https://spacenews.com