Privately built smallsat designed deep space communications
The competition heats up: A partnership between two British space companies, a smallsat manufacturer and a space antenna operator, will team up to build and test a new smallsat communications satellite in lunar orbit.
The SSTL-GES Lunar Pathfinder team are already working on the initial baseline design, with technical assistance from the European Space Agency (ESA). SSTL are designing a series of lunar communication satellites and will be building on their heritage of small satellite platforms in Low Earth orbit and Medium Earth orbit to go beyond Earth’s orbit for the first time. GES are upgrading one of the famous antennas at their Goonhilly site in Cornwall, UK, into a deep space ground asset, which will be the first element in a commercial deep space network. In addition, GES will provide a dedicated mission operations centre situated in Cornwall.
What is interesting about this is that this is a private effort to develop a modern commercial deep space communications network for future planetary missions. It would be competitive with NASA’s Deep Space Network, which presently is the only game in town and is generally made up of upgraded 1960s based technology. This new network would also eventually include a dedicated network of smallsats scattered through the solar system to act as communications relays. This is something that NASA does not provide, depending instead on the communications instruments of the planetary missions themselves.
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Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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The competition heats up: A partnership between two British space companies, a smallsat manufacturer and a space antenna operator, will team up to build and test a new smallsat communications satellite in lunar orbit.
The SSTL-GES Lunar Pathfinder team are already working on the initial baseline design, with technical assistance from the European Space Agency (ESA). SSTL are designing a series of lunar communication satellites and will be building on their heritage of small satellite platforms in Low Earth orbit and Medium Earth orbit to go beyond Earth’s orbit for the first time. GES are upgrading one of the famous antennas at their Goonhilly site in Cornwall, UK, into a deep space ground asset, which will be the first element in a commercial deep space network. In addition, GES will provide a dedicated mission operations centre situated in Cornwall.
What is interesting about this is that this is a private effort to develop a modern commercial deep space communications network for future planetary missions. It would be competitive with NASA’s Deep Space Network, which presently is the only game in town and is generally made up of upgraded 1960s based technology. This new network would also eventually include a dedicated network of smallsats scattered through the solar system to act as communications relays. This is something that NASA does not provide, depending instead on the communications instruments of the planetary missions themselves.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
My May 9 piece in Space Review mentioned this sort of thing as a virtual certainty to be undertaken by private enterprise. I figured it wouldn’t get started for a few years though. Delighted to have been proven too conservative.
The NASA DSN will probably be remembered as analogous to Arpanet. Arpanet proved that adaptive packet-switched communications were practical, but it was private enterprise that ultimately provided the money to build out the commercial Internet.
Dick,
From your commentary: “cease basing future plans on the ability of a decidedly finite NASA budget to support them and seek alternatives that promise to be, at the minimum, self-supporting or, better still, self-expanding. Non-profit, government-backed space initiatives, in short, must become the minor exceptions and profit-making business enterprises must become the norm for human presence and activity in space.”
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2978/1
You seem to be one of the few people advocating this. I agree with it. It is time for expansion into space to pay for itself and to be guided by the economic needs of Earth, not the political needs. As you say, it is self-supporting. It is not at the whim of the politicians of the moment.
I like your vision of the future.