Sateliot to launch five new satellites with SpaceX to expand 5G network coverage

Published on 29/09/2026 - 18:21 GMT+2

Catalan company Sateliot is set to put five new satellites into orbit this Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. With this mission, called Draconis, the company will reach a total of 11 satellites launched since it was founded and, by its calculations, will on average double the number of daily passes and halve the time it takes a satellite to fly back over the same point.

Lift-off is scheduled for 1 October at 20:18 (Spanish mainland time) from the Vandenberg base in California, as part of SpaceX's Transporter-18 mission, although it could still be moved at the last minute. The launch can be followed live from Espai Diagonal.

What Sateliot offers are, essentially, mobile phone masts in space. Its satellites extend the coverage of mobile operators, which purchase the service wholesale to provide Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity wherever terrestrial networks do not reach. The company maintains that the technology, based on 5G NTN, has already been validated.

The five new units, built by Alén Space, are small: 20 x 10 x 35 centimetres and 10 kilograms each, with a useful life of more than five years and an orbit of up to 600 kilometres.

Compared with the four it launched in 2024, they carry an optimised payload, a more reliable system for storing data on board, improved versions of the main computer and the attitude control system (greater stability and easier manoeuvres), as well as memories that are more resistant to radiation. According to the company, the maturity of the model has made it possible to design and produce them in half the time required for the previous mission.

The operation also involves Exolaunch, which has overseen integration and logistics; KSAT and Leaf Space, partners for the ground tracking and control stations; and Comfone, which provides IPX connectivity services to interconnect Sateliot's network with mobile operators.

Tritó, the next leap

These five satellites are part of a constellation that Sateliot wants to grow to more than 500 units, evolving through different generations: from massive IoT towards higher-capacity, more critical services, including direct connection to devices (D2D).

The change will come from 2027 with Tritó, which will debut 5G NR NTN technology, store-and-forward communications based on the 3GPP Release 19 standard and a digital multibeam phased-array antenna capable of managing several coverage beams dynamically. In this vein falls the agreement already announced with PLD Space for a dedicated mission aboard the Miura 5.

To finance this, the company is working on a Series C funding round worth 100 million euros. So far it has raised around another 100 million and expects to reach revenues of about 500 million in 2030.

"We have validated the technology and now we are increasing capacity and regularity so we can scale the service together with mobile operators," sums up Jaume Sanpera, CEO and co-founder of Sateliot. "Our goal is to turn the satellite into a natural extension of their networks wherever they do not reach," he adds.