Canada’s Kepler Communications has chosen Kongsberg NanoAvionics, a leading small satellite manufacturer and mission integrator, as the preferred European satellite bus provider for its hosted payload initiatives aboard spacecraft up to 500kg in mass. The non-exclusive preferential partnership is for missions requiring seamless access to The Kepler Network. It is also aimed at satellite operators seeking to transition to faster and more secure optical communications built on the US Space Development Agency’s (SDA) standards.
Through a Kepler service capacity commitment, NanoAvionics will start offering its own customers access to Kepler’s optical data relay network and on-orbit compute services as an optional feature within its portfolio of inter-satellite link solutions. This will provide NanoAvionics’ customers with a competitive advantage through access to low-latency, near-real-time, and high data throughput. These capabilities will be offered first on NanoAvionics MP42 microsatellite and followed by its CubeSat platforms, using different Optical Inter-Satellite Links (OISL). They will be capable of up to sub-second 2.5 Gbps connectivity and terabytes of data volume per day as a standard feature.
Through this agreement with NanoAvionics, Kepler aims to expand its market reach and enable simple and riskless adoption of optical communications. With this step, the two companies respond to the industry’s urgent need for higher bandwidth, lower latency, and secure, interoperable data transfer across terrestrial and space-based networks.
As the Kepler Network scales to 100 Gbps-class capacity with its next tranche of satellites, NanoAvionics will receive priority consideration, subject to availability and mutually agreed commercial terms, to access higher data rates, ensuring its platforms remain at the forefront of next-generation mission performance.
“NanoAvionics has earned a reputation for being one of the most reliable bus providers, helping customers with demanding mission requirements scale quickly and with confidence. This collaboration accelerates the shift toward space systems that operate in real time and on demand,” said Mina Mitry, CEO and Co-Founder of Kepler Communications. “By integrating our optical network and on-orbit compute services with NanoAvionics’ platforms, we are enabling the transformation of space from a store-and-forward model to a responsive environment that supports time-critical, dynamically tasked missions.
Atle Wøllo, CEO of NanoAvionics, said: “Through this cooperation with Kepler, we are positioning NanoAvionics at the forefront of the industry’s adoption of optical communications. It allows us to offer transmission technology that is becoming essential for timely decision-making. This industry-wide move can provide an exponential boost for sovereign national security missions and for commercial operators serving time-sensitive data for civil, commercial, and security needs.
“The satellite market is entering a new phase of accelerated competition. In this new environment, next-generation communications performance with near real-time analytics, enabled by AI and edge processing, will determine who is leading the market.”
This partnership comes on the back of Kepler’s successful launch of the first tranche of its optical relay satellites in January of 2026. It brought the company on track to achieve Initial Operating Capability (IOC) for its optical network in early 2026. With this network, Kepler will become a critical enabler of ultra-low latency data transport, real-time tasking, and advanced on-orbit computing for the satellite missions that will define the next decade.
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