Some of the most important and disruptive changes that the wave of LEO constellations will bring to the satellite business will be on the ground, rather than in orbit, experts said at the LEO Digital Forum.
ST Engineering iDirect CTO Frederik Simoens said to light up all the FCC-approved NGSO satellites “you will need a lot of gateways on the ground. The amount of gateway infrastructure will be enormous.” He stressed the entire ground segment needs to be virtualized: “We’ll only do limited baseband processing functionality close to the teleport. All the other network functions will move to a more central location, which gives the benefit that all that processing functionality can easily shift from one gateway to another, or from one satellite to another.”
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Kymeta VP of Product Management Lilac Muller said terminal costs can only fall if volumes rise, but the lack of industry standards complicates this: “New constellations and hybrid, multi-orbit networks each have their own standards and capabilities.” She said SpaceX can drive down terminal costs because it doesn’t need to support integration with any networks other than its own.
Virgin Orbit VP of Business Development Stephen Eisele pointed to new customer segments beyond traditional buyers in government, military, and oil and gas: “They just want the data. They’d like to sign one signature on one contract that provides one solution.” He said companies like Virgin Orbit will increasingly offer bundled, turnkey solutions. VS
