27 Jun 2019

One step for Lacuna Space, one giant leap for LoRaWAN

Lacuna Space has completed the first phase of testing as part of its work in conjunction with Semtech to allow direct communications from LoRa-based devices to satellite gateways using the LoRaWAN protocol.

Lacuna’s first satellite launch of the year was on 1April from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India, where it shared a ride to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with EMISAT and 27 other satellites. Lacuna’s LoRa-based Space Gateway was hosted on a 6U cubesat satellite provided by Nano Avionics, and the satellite and the Space Gateway out-performed expectations during the initial commissioning phase. Three more satellites will be launched in the last half of this year to complete Lacuna’s initial demonstration constellation.

Thomas Telkamp Lacuna Space’s CTO, said: “We have test systems deployed around the world in countries as diverse as South Africa, Netherlands, UK, USA, India, Japan, Slovenia and the Reunion Island, and we have shown that we are able to communicate effectively from anywhere in the world, no matter how remote, to our LoRa-based Space Gateway.“

Lacuna is looking to perform more extensive demonstrations with a select group of potential users towards the end of the year, aided by part funding and support from the European Space Agency and UK Space Agency.