Sunday, September 25, 2016

Scott Larson Has Started Another Space Company

         By Henry Stewart

Scott Larson. Photo c/o @scolarson.
The ex-founder and CEO  of Vancouver based Urthecast, has resurfaced as the owner of another Vancouver based space company.

Entrepreneur Scott Larson, whose brother Wade Larson helped to co-found Urthecast and continues in the role of CEO, spoke about his latest venture in the September 23rd, 2016 Globe and Mail post, "UrtheCast founder plots a new course to space."

The new start-up, called Helios Wire, is attempting to build out and democratize a space-enabled internet of things network.

As outlined on the company website, "Helios believes that the IoT shouldn't be expensive, complicated, or only for large global companies. If done right, it can literally be for everyone."

As outlined in the article:
Mr. Larson’s plan for Helios Wire – having acquired the use of spectrum, originally reserved for cattle tracking in Australia, through a partnership with (the Australian based mobile satellite systems operator) Sirion Global – is to raise $10-million to launch a mobile satellite system by 2018 using 30 MHz of the S-band spectrum, enough bandwidth to potentially service five billion transmitters. 
The plan is to deliver a two-way communications from space for potential IoT customers in transportation, security/public safety, energy, industrial and agriculture.
Helios will have access to the spectrum through its partnership with Sirion until 2019, which is enough time, at least according to Larson, to get the first couple of satellites up and demonstrate the commercial viability of the program.

Graphic from the Helios website. The company expects to use low cost micro-satellites and and other tools to provide a price advantage over traditional earth imaging organizations. Graphic c/o Helios.

According to the Sirion Global website, "there are numerous industries that could benefit significantly from the Sirion global M2M (machine to machine, another term for internet of things) service," because they require the tracking of assets located outside of the range of terrestrial cellular services. These include the livestock industry, the agricultural industry, the environmental industry, the transportation industry and the defence industry.

As outlined in the September 19th, 2016 post, "New Leonardo DiCaprio App Tracks Fishy Things on the High Seas," applications are already being developed to utilize the data which can be derived from these sorts of networks.
_______________________________________________________________________

Henry Stewart is the pseudonym of a Toronto based aerospace writer.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Support our Patreon Page