Privately built smallsat designed deep space communications
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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.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right or below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
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.
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.