Canada-based exactEarth has teamed up with Harris to bring into service five additional satellites as part of the former’s automatic identification system satellite constellation designed to support the delivery of a real-time ship tracking service to the maritime market.
The addition of five more exactEarth satellites brings the total number of operational systems in the real-time AIS constellation to nine, exactEarth said Tuesday.
Harris combined its reconfigurable AppSTAR payload platform with exactEarth’s signal decollision detection system to deliver the exactView RT service to the maritime sector under the partnership.
The Harris-backed exactView RT service works to leverage Iridium Communications’ NEXT satellite constellation to provide real-time vessel tracking information in support of maritime domain awareness efforts.
ExactEarth plans to launch on Oct. 4 eight more satellites with Iridium NEXT to further build up its satellite AIS constellation, which will be composed of at least 70 payloads.