The startup’s co-founders, from left: Chief Technology Officer Griffin Cleverly, CEO Bridgit Mendler and Head of Software Shaurya Luthra.
Northwood Place
Northwood Space, the startup led by former TV star and singer Bridgit Mendler, passed its first major growth test last week, linking it to Planet Labs imagery satellites in orbit.
“We’re building this global network to send data for satellites, built from phased array technology that we’ve now successfully validated, both in the lab and in the field,” Mendler, Northwood’s CEO, told CNBC.
El Segundo, California-based Northwood, unveiled earlier this year, focuses on the terrain of the space connectivity equation. Ground stations are the vital link for transmitting data to and from orbit and are particularly important for the operation and control of satellites.
The company’s prototype “Frankie” antenna during testing in North Dakota on October 5, 2024.
Northwood Place
The startup develops ground stations for mass production and is betting that its phased array-based system, called Portal, can outperform the parabolic dish antennas traditionally used by ground station companies. Projecting Portal will be able to connect to up to 10 satellites simultaneously versus the standard 1 to 3 for parabolic dishes.
“For Northwood, what we want to do is introduce a new standard for connectivity for companies,” Mendler said.
The ground station as a service, or GSaaS, market has companies looking for the opportunity to manage the ground side of space infrastructure. Along these lines, Amazon started the AWS Ground Station service and The satellite communications giant Eutelsat has proposed a nearly $1 billion deal in the sector.
Mendler’s Northwood wants to take GSaaS a step further, eliminating what it sees as “connectivity very much stuck in a different era” of blackouts and “super expensive networks.”
“Thinking about the mobile phone industry – where we draw parallels with how cell towers and shared assets like this ultimately have highly verticalized players – the tower companies have finished offloading and selling their assets. We expected that the common model will be an efficiency,” Mendler said.
In her view, ground stations are “the third leg of the stool” of space technology, the other two being rockets or cargo vehicles and satellites or orbital infrastructure.
“The industry is really at a point where there’s a lot of appetite for growth and that’s something we can really step into the industry and accelerate progress,” Mendler said.
Trials in North Dakota
Installation of the company’s prototype antenna in the early hours of October 2, 2024.
Northwood Place
Last week, Northwood’s team was in remote Maddock, North Dakota, to test their prototype antenna — “affectionately named Frankie,” Mendler noted — by hooking up to an orbiting Planet satellite.
The effort is known as a TT&C — telemetry, tracking and control — test, with Northwood aiming to contact Planet’s satellite on both S-band and X-band frequencies.
“We were able to achieve two-way communications for the duration of a pass with the Planet satellites and achieved nominal communications for them. They were able to perform their functions as they would in their own system,” Mendler said.
Prototype testing on October 5, 2024.
Northwood Space
Northwood designed and built Frankie in four months, the company said, and was able to deploy the antenna “from truck to live sky testing” in six hours. Planet, with more than 150 imaging satellites in orbit, heralded Northwood’s test as a “significant milestone.”
“Northwood is not only solving historical issues like cost and scale, but has built and field tested its phased array antenna faster than previously thought. We are proud to be part of this breakthrough in ground station technology,” Joseph Breu, Planet’s senior director of global terrestrial networks, said in a statement to CNBC.
A rendering of a Portal site.
Northwood Place
Northwood has designed two antennas for its Portal system, with a larger 5-by-5-foot S-band antenna and a smaller 18-by-18-inch X-band antenna.
The company plans to deploy Portal sites that can support up to 10 simultaneous satellite connections, with data speeds of more than 1 gigabit per second per beam, starting next year. Northwood is currently evaluating locations in the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand for the first Portal sites.
“Performance-wise, we accomplished everything we hoped to accomplish,” Mendler said, adding that Northwood is “really grateful for [Planet’s] participation and support throughout the test”.
“It just unlocks a lot of things for the next chapter,” Mendler said.