As data from space spikes, an innovative ground station company seeks to cash in

Summary

By the end of the year, Northwood, based in El Segundo, California, had shown the ability to build eight of these Portal arrays a month. And in January the company had deployed operational Portal antennas across two continents. These deployments, which comprise an area of 8 to 15 meters, have the equivalent capability of a 7-meter parabolic dish, said Griffin Cleverly, co-founder and chief technical officer of Northwood. “Across our initial Portal sites, it will be a few dozen spacecraft that each of them can handle,” he said. “And then, as we get into 2027, with much more scale manufacturing, we’ll easily be able to handle hundreds of satellites with our network.” Government seeks modern solutions Northwood’s entry into the development of ground stations—there are about half a dozen major players in the industry, some long-established others new—came as the Space Force was looking to modernize its Satellite Control Network. According to a government report published in 2023, the network makes 450 daily contacts with satellites and supports the launch and operations of these vehicles. The report found that the network faced “sustainment and obsolescence issues while demands on the system are increasing.” The Space Force is seeking to address these issues as well as the proliferation of satellites in low-Earth orbit, and came to Northwood looking to scale up its system to meet these needs. Northwood began working with the Space Force in September. Data volume will continue to grow The company seeks to address both government and commercial customers with the Portal system and future antennas. One growth area much discussed in recent months has been orbital data centers, which would necessitate the movement of huge amounts of data to and from space. Mendler said Northwood was “enthusiastic” to support such initiatives. “Our overall perspective on the space industry was that volume of data was going to go up, use cases were going to go up,” Mendler said of the reasons ...