Iridium unveils new stand-alone satellites for hosted payloads

Iridium Communications on Monday unveiled a new satellite concept aimed at helping governments and others put sensors and other payloads into space at half the cost of current programs. The satellite operator said there was so much demand to put sensors on its next-generation communications Iridium NEXT satellites it will begin launching in 2015, that it decided to offer a new service to host third-party payloads on stand-alone satellites that would still be able to use the ground control and communications systems of the Iridium NEXT network. More

(Source: Reuters - Sep 10)