Satellite Commissioned CAMBRIDGE, ON, Dec. 7, 2018 /CNW/ - exactEarth Ltd. ("exactEarth" or the "Company") (TSX:XCT), a leading provider of satellite Automatic Identification System ("AIS") data services announces that its advanced AIS payload onboard the Spanish radar satellite, PAZ, has completed its commissioning phase and is now fully-operational. The PAZ satellite is owned and operated by Hisdesat Servicios Estrategicos S.A. and hosts an AIS payload owned by exactEarth, which is the first commercial AIS payload to be in operation onboard a radar satellite.
Launched earlier in 2018, PAZ is in the dawn-dusk sun synchronous orbit that is occupied by a majority of the world's radar satellites. With an AIS payload onboard, for the first time AIS vessel signals and Synthetic Aperture Radar ("SAR") imagery can be combined to enhance global maritime monitoring capabilities. Supported by exactView RT, the Company's superior real-time satellite AIS service, the fusion of these two data sets can better assist maritime security and surveillance by rapidly correlating two data sources to identify so-called 'dark targets', which are vessels that should be transmitting AIS signals, but are not.