Swarm estimates launching a 1U cubesat costs between $80,000 and $100,000 and estimates its satellites cost about one quarter of that to launch.
Swarm planned to about triple its team from 11 employees by the end of 2019.
Swarm has seven SpaceBee satellites in orbit and plans to deploy at least 143 more to reach a constellation of about 150 satellites for very low-data-rate communications.
Swarm’s FCC authorization request for the three SpaceBee satellites that launched on 2018-12-03 received FCC approval in September.
The FCC directed Swarm to designate a regulatory compliance director responsible for implementing a compliance plan that requires pre-launch notices to the FCC for 36 months and a compliance training program for relevant employees.