Description
Swarm Technologies is a private company building a low Earth orbit satellite constellation for communications with Internet Of Things (IoT) devices using a Store and forward design. Social Capital incubated Swarm, Craft Ventures was an early investor. On 16 July 2021, Swarm entered into an agreement to become a direct wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
They have an Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licence for low bandwidth communications satellites in low Earth orbit.
In 2018, Swarm became the first ever company found to have deployed satellites without regulatory approval after an FCC investigation into the startup's launch on an Indian PSLV rocket of its first four picosatellites in January that year.
By December 2020, Swarm had launched 9 test satellites and 36 of a planned 150 low Earth orbit satellites to provide communication with IOT devices.
In February 2021, Swarm announced that its commercial services were now live using 72 commercial satellites providing its global low cost data to customers.
The Swarm Tile is its dedicated satellite two-way data modem designed to be low energy and embedded on the PCB of third party products. Other products include a data plan and development kit.
History
Swarm Technologies was founded in 2016 by Sara Spangelo and Benjamin Longmier, former employees of Google and Apple respectively.
The company became widely known in industry circles after illegally launching its first four test satellites in 2018. The responsible US regulatory authority FCC had refused the license for the start because they feared that the satellites could be too small to be recognized by the space surveillance systems. They could then become particularly dangerous, since “invisible” space debris. Despite this, the satellites, along with around 30 other payloads, were launched on an Indian PSLV rocket. The FCC imposed a $900,000 fine for this. The housing of the next test satellites was then enlarged. Together with correspondingly enlarged radar reflectors and a GPS-based position transmitter, the necessary traceability and thus also licensing was achieved.
The construction of the actual constellation began with the launch of twelve third-generation SpaceBEEs on September 3, 2020 on a European Vega rocket. The satellite operator was lucky because the subsequent Vega launch failed, like the previous one, due to technical problems; all payloads of these two flights were lost (→ List of Vega rocket launches). After an additional 48 SpaceBEE satellites were launched by the end of January 2021, commercial operations of the constellation began.
