Kepler Successfully Launches First Tranche of Optical Relay Satellites
Press Release + Noah Note
TORONTO, ONTARIO — January 11, 2026 — Kepler Communications today announced the successful launch of the first tranche of its optical relay satellites aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The satellites will now begin commissioning as Kepler transitions its optical data relay network into operational service.
The tranche consists of 10 satellites, each approximately 300 kilograms, equipped with high-capacity SDA-compatible optical terminals and multi-GPU on-orbit compute modules with terabytes of storage that enable low-latency data transfer, secure routing, and edge processing directly in space. Once operational, the network will provide real-time connectivity, advanced computing, and hosted payload capabilities, creating a cloud environment on orbit for critical commercial and sovereign space missions.
“This launch brings a new paradigm to space applications,” said Mina Mitry, chief executive officer and co-founder of Kepler Communications. “Our optical relay satellites make it possible for users to rapidly deploy their missions with a real-time, connected, cloud environment, fundamentally changing how data flows on orbit and what space systems can achieve for people and planet.”
The mission supports commercial activity by customers, including Earth-observation payloads hosted on Kepler’s platform and Kepler’s collaboration with Axiom Space, which will use the network to enable on-orbit data center nodes.
The launch builds on Kepler’s demonstrated optical performance, including validated space-to-space, space-to-ground, and space-to-air laser links. Future tranches will expand network capacity and introduce new capabilities, including 100-gigabit optical technology designed for backward compatibility and alignment with emerging global standards.
Noah Note: Congrats to Kepler! This has been a long-time coming, and I'm happy to see it coming to fruition. More Canadian capacity in space is a good thing.
This first trache of 10 satellites will soon be joined by a Trache 2 that aims to achieve over 95% coverage in LEO while providing backwards-compatible 100-gigabit optical capability. I don't fully know the timeline for that second trache, but I hear it’s coming soon.
Either way this is something to be proud of! There is never enough capacity in space, and the more we can get up there the better.
It is encouraging to see this hardware actually reach orbit. According to federal grant records, Ottawa backed this project with $20 million from the Strategic Innovation Fund in 2024. We often see those line items vanish into administrative costs in the Public Accounts, so seeing ten functional satellites is a refreshing return on investment.
Noah, is this the first satellite system to use optical data transmission? I’m hardly an expert, but “Go Kepler”!