en.Wedoany.com Reported - Following SpaceX's rideshare mission on July 7, Apolink has established contact with its first satellite, paving the way for a data relay demonstration under a new experimental license granted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Apolink CEO Onkar Batra stated that the company received the FCC's first experimental license for S-band inter-satellite link operations. The license allows the IPoS-TDsM CubeSat to receive S-band signals from other designated partner satellites in low Earth orbit on an unprotected and non-interference basis, store them, and forward them to approved ground stations.
The 3U CubeSat's mission, IPoS-TDsM (Inter-satellite Protocol of Operations — Technology Demonstration Mission), aims to close low-power links over a distance of approximately 150 kilometers during line-of-sight passes. The first rendezvous window is expected to open in July and last through the end of November. Batra explained that the core technology involves receiving data from an already orbiting satellite with its own radio equipment, digitizing it without needing to understand the data content, and transmitting it to the ground while maintaining signal integrity, thereby acting as a transparent relay layer. This capability will eventually allow operators to send and receive command and control signals to and from their satellites without waiting for ground passes.
Singapore-based NuSpace is the primary partner for this demonstration mission, using its NuLink-1 and NuLink-2 connectivity satellites launched in May. The mission follows laboratory simulations and tests using NuLink-2's active beacon, which helped validate the company's ability to handle signals from different transceivers, although IPoS-TDsM aims to demonstrate this capability over the air for the first time. The California-based startup is seeking other backward-compatible partner satellites to test the technology before deploying a relay network of 32 interconnected satellites. In February, Apolink partnered with Canada-based startup Galaxia to launch a satellite in 2027 to help refine its in-orbit data relay technology.
IPoS-TDsM was one of 81 payloads carried by the Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California into a sun-synchronous orbit.
