Black Kite 1, ..., 4

Black Kite 1 [Rapidtek]

Black Kite 1 to 4 are a series of Taiwanese 8U CubeSat developed and operated by Rapidtek Technologies in cooperation with the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). The satellites form the initial deployment of Rapidtek's planned low Earth orbit (LEO) Internet of Things (IoT) constellation, demonstrating communications technologies and satellite platform capabilities.

The Black Kite satellites are upgraded successors to the company's earlier Nightjar 3U CubeSat, developed under Taiwan's Startup CubeSat Program. Deployed into Sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes of approximately 500–600 km, the satellites use Rapidtek's proprietary ground station network to verify end-to-end communications through local and remote data relay.

The constellation is designed to verify spacecraft system stability and attitude pointing accuracy, demonstrate Rapidtek's Ku-band high-speed communications payloads and LoRa low-data-rate communications payloads, and evaluate high-precision GPS receivers together with space-qualified GPGPUs supplied by TASA. Compared with the earlier 3U platform, the 8U satellites accommodate additional payloads and support more demanding communications applications, targeting connectivity for remote and underserved regions through LEO IoT services.

The four satellites constitute the first phase of Rapidtek's LEO IoT constellation. Besides serving as technology demonstrators, they establish an initial network for real-time ground-to-space data transfer and support the development of commercial LEO communications services while demonstrating Taiwan's domestic satellite development capabilities.