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The Canadian government’s Inuvik Satellite Station Facility in the Northwest Territories.<\/p>\n
(Bloomberg) — Satellite operators\u00a0are\u00a0looking north. Way north. As the US, China and others compete\u00a0in\u00a0space, the need for fast and frequent communication links with satellites orbiting near the North Pole is making Arctic ground stations\u00a0a hot commodity.<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s turned\u00a0Deadhorse, Alaska, into an unlikely outpost\u00a0in the space race. The community on the North Slope tundra, about 850 miles north of Anchorage by road, is the gateway to the Prudhoe Bay oil field. Virtually everything there exists to support the extraction of fossil fuels. There\u2019s no hospital, bank or school, but there are prefab dorms for workers and a general store selling bear spray.<\/p>\n
Deadhorse also has infrastructure for satellites, including fiberoptic cables to transmit data.\u00a0\u201cYou can only put satellite dishes where there\u2019s fiber,\u201d said Christopher Richins, founder of RBC Signals LLC, which operates eight antennas in Deadhorse. \u201cOtherwise, the data comes down, and it\u2019s got nowhere to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
RBC Signals founder Christopher Richins.Photographer: Nathaniel Wilder\/Bloomberg
RBC Signals wants to expand in Deadhorse.Photographer: Nathaniel Wilder\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
Demand is growing throughout the Arctic.\u00a0\u201cWe will see more ground stations, we\u2019ll see more dishes at existing ground stations, we\u2019ll see more cables to provide redundancy,\u201d said Michael Byers, a professor at the University of British Columbia who does research on\u00a0outer space and Arctic sovereignty.<\/p>\n
Climate change is further opening\u00a0the region to\u00a0shipping and heightening\u00a0its strategic importance. A Chinese shipping company\u00a0plans regular summer routes through the Arctic Ocean to Europe,\u00a0part of a plan for\u00a0a \u201cPolar Silk Road.\u201d Beijing has also vastly increased the\u00a0number of its polar satellites, according to\u00a0Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.<\/p>\n
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President Donald Trump\u2019s proposed Golden Dome space-based defense system will likely include satellites focused on the area, and the US is already handing out lucrative defense contracts for work in the north. Northrop Grumman Corp. in 2024 announced the activation of Arctic payloads for the US Space Force\u00a0and has a deal\u00a0worth more than $4.1 billion to make two\u00a0polar-orbiting\u00a0satellites by 2031. Boeing Co. in July won a $2.8 billion Space Force contract for two satellites and an option for two more, part of a $12 billion program that Space Systems Command said\u00a0will include \u201cenhanced Arctic capability.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s good about a polar orbit is you pass over every spot of the globe,\u201d\u00a0said David Marsh, founder of Washington-based consulting firm Space For Earth and an Arctic expert formerly at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.\u00a0\u201cThe entire Earth is rotating underneath you as you go around.\u201d<\/p>\n
If China or Russia were to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, \u201call of that is going to fly over the North Pole,\u201d said Pierre Leblanc, a retired colonel who served as leader of Canadian Armed Forces in the Arctic. \u201cIt\u2019s very important to have a lot of sensors that are going to be monitoring that area and sensors that have the ability to upload information.\u201d<\/p>\n
An ideal location to look up at orbit is Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago that\u2019s the closest sizeable habitation to the North Pole and connected via undersea cable to mainland Norway, a NATO member. The islands are home to Svalsat, the world\u2019s largest polar satellite ground station.<\/p>\n
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However, a 1920 treaty recognizing Oslo\u2019s sovereignty forbids Svalbard\u2019s use for \u201cwarlike purposes.\u201d That means \u201cdata can\u2019t be downloaded for military use,\u201d said Ole Kokvik, the\u00a0Svalsat director.<\/p>\n
The vulnerability of subsea cables creates another complication. A Space Norway link between Svalbard and the mainland suffered a power outage in 2022\u00a0and suspected saboteurs have targeted underwater data cables in the Baltic Sea.<\/p>\n
Svalsat, the world\u2019s largest satellite ground station, in Svalbard, Norway.Photographer: Lorna MacKay\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n
Those drawbacks are\u00a0fueling demand for alternatives.\u00a0There are \u201crisks being on a remote island, especially if you have submarines and ships doing whatever they do,\u201d said Fredrik Sch\u00e4der, chief business development officer of Arctic Space Technologies AB, which\u00a0operates a facility\u00a0in the Swedish town of\u00a0Pite\u00e5, where the company\u00a0installed its first antenna in 2022. The startup\u00a0now has 35 there, with\u00a0plans to grow to 40 next year, serving government customers and companies like Viasat Inc. and Eutelsat Communications. <\/p>\n
Eutelsat, which operates a network competing against Elon Musk\u2019s\u00a0Starlink, last year opened a ground station\u00a0in Yellowknife, the capital of Canada\u2019s Northwest Territories, with Swedish Space Corp. and local partner Northwestel.<\/p>\n
Another hub of Canadian activity is Inuvik, population about 3,300. The Northwest Territories town is home to ground stations owned by Canada and another owned by Norway\u2019s\u00a0Kongsberg Satellite Services. Users include the French, German and Swedish governments.\u00a0This year, the Inuvik\u00a0Satellite Station Facility added five more dishes, which Mayor Peter Clarkson estimated took the total to 13. \u201cCanada is setting up another dish because their dish is full,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAnd then the Swedes have put up another dish.\u00a0Same thing: They\u2019re getting a broader customer base.\u201d<\/p>\n
C-Core, operator of another Inuvik ground station, in October announced expansion plans\u00a0as Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s government seeks to reduce its reliance on the US.\u00a0 C-Core, headquartered in\u00a0St. John\u2019s, Newfoundland and Labrador,\u00a0will \u201cserve Canadian missions for Canadians,\u201d said Desmond Power, vice president for remote sensing.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a small Inuvik-based internet service provider called New North Networks, run by local entrepreneur Tom Zubko, has acquired land in town for another ground station site. \u201cChina satellites are flying over the top of us every hour or so,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Russian satellites are doing the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farther east, more orbital activity has increased the importance of Pituffik, a US Space Force base in Greenland used for satellite monitoring. Vice President JD Vance visited in March and said Denmark had \u201cunder-invested in the security architecture\u201d of the island, which Trump has said the US needs to acquire.<\/p>\n
Like Svalbard, though, Greenland depends on subsea cables vulnerable to attack \u2014\u00a0and it\u2019s not in the US.\u00a0 \u201cYou want to have a robust, modernized footprint on American (Arctic) territory,\u201d\u00a0said Elizabeth Buchanan, senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra, who pointed to infrastructure growth during the administration of former President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
One US location\u00a0is the Clear Space Force Station, about 80 miles southwest of Fairbanks. In June, the Space Force worked with the US Missile Defense Agency and US Northern Command to test a system from Clear to track intercontinental ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n
Expecting more customers, RBC Signals wants to expand in Deadhorse, which founder Ritchins said is also home to\u00a0an Amazon.com Inc. facility that\u2019s part of the AWS Ground Station network.An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the location of its Alaska facility.<\/p>\n
RBC Signals customers include\u00a0the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Space Development Agency, according to Chief Executive Officer Ron Faith. In Deadhorse, the company started with a single antenna, now on the roof of the area\u2019s only hotel, and the newest is a 3.9-meter antenna that began service last year.<\/p>\n
Far north, \u201cyou can see a satellite 14-plus times a day,\u201d he said, \u201cwhereas if you\u2019re at a mid-latitude, you may only see that satellite four times a day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Construction poses its challenges. To keep out\u00a0snow and winds, the sail-shaped antennas are enclosed in domes\u00a0mounted on heated sheds. The\u00a0structures resemble hot air balloons, tethered to the ground with steel pilings drilled 45 feet deep in case the permafrost thaws.<\/p>\n
During construction in 2018, staff arrived one morning to see\u00a0a grizzly bear stroll out of an unfinished structure. The company has since added a door (that\u2019s kept locked), as well as a chain-link fence and barbed wire to deter human intruders.<\/p>\n
One factor that could make Arctic stations less important is the emergence of inter-satellite links to transmit data in space before sending to a terrestrial transmitter. \u201cAll of a sudden, maybe it\u2019s not so important to have geographically remote ground stations\u201d so long as you have enough satellites to relay data to each other, C-Core\u2019s Power said.<\/p>\n
Even with such advances, satellite operators will likely keep observation points in the High North, said Marsh, the consultant who started Space for Earth.\u00a0\u201cEven with this high tech, extremely capable inter-satellite laser communications, you\u2019re still limited by bandwidth,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s still best if you have a big old dish and you have a nice fiberoptic cable and you have no concerns about the amount of data you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
–With assistance from Alan Crawford, Ott Ummelas and Jade Khatib.<\/p>\n
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\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canadian government’s Inuvik Satellite Station Facility in the Northwest Territories. (Bloomberg) — Satellite operators\u00a0are\u00a0looking north. Way north.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[43349,159261,7904,150247,144,159260,159258,50729,2439,159257,79,193,14931,52260,159259],"class_list":{"0":"post-307460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-arctic-ocean","9":"tag-arctic-sovereignty","10":"tag-bloomberg","11":"tag-canadian-armed-forces","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-christopher-richins","14":"tag-deadhorse","15":"tag-ground-stations","16":"tag-northwest-territories","17":"tag-polar-satellite","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-space","20":"tag-space-systems-command","21":"tag-svalbard","22":"tag-the-north-pole"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}