DENVER – Kleos Space announced plans April 25 to offer customers dedicated, taskable radio frequency monitoring capabilities.
It’s a new business model for Kleos, a Luxembourg based company that operates three clusters of four satellites to detect RF signals and pinpoint their location. To date, Luxembourg-based Kleos has provided RF monitoring data to government and commercial customers.
“Our discussions with government departments, national security agencies and commercial entities have highlighted a growing need for a dedicated mission capability, including unrestricted access,” Kleos CEO Andy Bowyer said in a statement.
With the new Mission-as-a-Service model, Kleos will offer customers “exclusive access to Kleos’ dedicated, in-orbit radio frequency reconnaissance satellite clusters for fixed periods of time and capacity,” according to the April 25 news release. “Each Mission-as-a-Service contract will be tailored to suit the customer requirements and needs including on the percent of satellite capacity needed, level of taskability required and corresponding data rights.”
At the same time, Kleos will continue to sell data from its constellation, which eventually could include as many as 20 satellite clusters. Kleos sent its third cluster to orbit April 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission. Another cluster of four Kleos satellites is scheduled to launch in a couple of months.
Through Kleo’s Data-as-a-Service business, multiple customers gain access to the same commercial dataset. In contrast, the Mission-as-a-Service model “is tailored to meet the need of specific intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance requirements of an individual customer mission,” Bowyer said.
The data service model relies on high volume to offset low contract values, while Mission-as-a-Service contracts are expected to have a higher price tag.
“This blend of offering reflects the balance of needs between the commercial and non-commercial customer we have witnessed developing over the last few years,” Bowyer said.
