The Space Economy Season 5, Episode 1 – Kepler Communications CEO Mina Mitry – SpaceQ

My guest for the first episode of season 5 of SpaceQ’s flagship podcast, the Space Economy, is Mina Mitry, CEO of Kepler Communications.

The Toronto based telecommunications company has a pretty big goal, that of being the internet access provider in space, from low Earth orbit (LEO), to the Moon and beyond. To make that happen the company has two satellites constellations planned, the first for the Internet of Things (IoT) market. For that constellation, they currently and have 15 satellites in orbit of a planned 140. The other satellite constellation in the works would be for the broadband market and would have 360 satellites. But that’s not all.

They have a new product called Aether which Mina will discuss in detail during our interview. But subsequent to our interview which was recorded on Nov. 15, 2021, media reports came out outlining plans by Kepler for a S-band LEO constellation of 114,852 satellites. The media reports however had it slightly wrong. While Kepler, working with Germany’s Federal Network Agency, had submitted an application to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), it wasn’t for a constellation, it was for the small Aether communication hardware that could eventually be placed on 114,852 potential customer satellites. Still, these numbers are mind-boggling when you think that just over 10 years ago we only had a total of 1,000 active satellites in orbit. 

Listen in to my conversation with Mina Mitry.