This story originally appeared on U of T News.
An award-winning team of alumni from U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering is building satellites so small they could fit in your gym bag. Their startup, Kepler Communications, plans to place 140 of these low-cost “cubesats” into space over the next five years. The first one will blast into orbit this November.
Kepler’s orbiting system will make air travel safer, let us instantly detect leaks in remote oil pipelines, help improve crop yields and monitor the heart rates of far-flung emergency
rescue workers.
Working with U of T’s innovation incubators, Kepler secured more than US $5 million in funding to develop its technology and bring its first cubesats to market. But their five-year strategy is just the beginning. As Kepler co-founder and CEO Mina Mitry (EngSci 1T2, UTIAS MASc 1T4) says, “Our vision is to provide ubiquitous connectivity to gather the world’s information.”
U of T News spoke with Mitry and Jeff Osborne, co-founder and vice president, business development of Kepler, ahead of Entrepreneurship@UofT Week.
Read the full Q & A at U of T News.