Spire declined to say how many customers its space services business has secured, although the group counts more than 625 customers across more than 60 countries. Most of them are 3U in size, Spark told SpaceNews, but the company also designs and manufactures 6U, 12U, and 16U satellites. Spire operates a constellation of more than a hundred multipurpose satellites in low Earth orbit that it builds in-house. Spire co-founder Joel Spark, who is general manager for the operator’s space services business, said Hancom-2 is currently planned to be the only payload on its upcoming 6U satellite. The South Korean company “plans to provide solutions that observe crops and predict output through satellite observations,” Hancom CEO Choi Myungjin said, and “initial target countries are in Asia and the Middle East, where demand for satellite image data is high.” Hancom-1 and Hancom-2 are focused on optical imagery for agricultural applications and are part of a proposed constellation of up to 50 satellites. Hancom is a spin-off from South Korea’s space agency and specializes in image analysis for tracking vehicles and changes in infrastructure and the environment. In May, SpaceX launched a Spire satellite carrying the Hancom-1 payload on a Falcon 9 Transporter-5 rideshare mission, marking the first commercial satellite deployed for a private South Korean company.
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