BREMEN, Germany \u2014 Swedish Space Corp. has rolled out a new ground station service designed to provide streamlined support for operators of small satellites and constellations.<\/p>\n
The company announced at Space Tech Expo Europe here Nov. 18 its SSC Go service, which uses a dedicated network of 3.7-meter antennas at five sites worldwide to provide S- and X-band communications, with Ka-band to follow next year.<\/p>\n
The new service differs from SSC\u2019s current ground station offerings, which use larger antennas. \u201cWe\u2019ve very much been addressing more of a premium market with those services,\u201d said Nick Priborsky, president of SSC\u2019s Connect ground segment division, in an interview.<\/p>\n
SSC Go is designed to compete with similar services such as Kongsberg Satellite Services\u2019 KSATlite and Leaf Space. The emphasis is on streamlined, simplified service for customers of smaller satellites who, company officials said, don\u2019t need the \u201cwhite glove\u201d support of SSC\u2019s traditional offerings.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnboarding will be probably a little bit easier,\u201d Priborsky said. The service will also offer machine-to-machine interfaces to automate scheduling of passes and transfer downlinked data into cloud computing services.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just see the demand out there, and it\u2019s a market segment that so far we\u2019ve not been able to address,\u201d he said. \u201cNow we have that possibility to address that market as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Priborsky said he expects SSC Go to stand out from competitors in some technical aspects, such as dual-polarization X-band downlinks that can double data rates for satellites that support the capability. \u201cOtherwise, we really do hope that, as we\u2019re not the market leader, we can offer a very competitive price as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Redundancy is also a selling point. \u201cThere\u2019s some value from a risk management perspective not to take passes from just a single provider,\u201d he said. \u201cYou never quite know nowadays: sea cables and terrestrial network communications can be damaged and brought down.\u201d<\/p>\n
SSC Go will start with five ground stations, four of them at high latitudes optimized for satellites in sun-synchronous orbits: Kiruna, Sweden; North Pole, Alaska; Inuvik, Canada; and Punta Arenas, Chile. The fifth is in Western Australia, which the company said was of interest to customers looking to quickly downlink data after passing over East Asia.<\/p>\n
The company will consider expanding SSC Go to other ground stations in its network based on customer demand, Priborsky said.<\/p>\n
He declined to say how many antennas will be available at each station. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of capacity that will be available,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not starting just with a couple of antennas here and there. We do have some serious capacity we can start off with.\u201d<\/p>\n
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