CesiumAstro Wins $395,000 NASA Contract for Communications Study

CesiumAstro Founder and CEO Shey Sabripour, holds the company’s Nightingale active phased array communications platform. Photo: CesiumAstro

CesiumAstro won a NASA award worth $395,640 for a wideband satellite communications capability study, the company announced Wednesday. The award is from NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, which manages the agency’s two communication networks — the Deep Space Network and Near Space Network (NSN). 

NASA has a goal of creating an interoperable network of commercial and government assets for near-Earth communications, and CesiumAstro’s study may contribute to the evolution of NSN. 

CesiumAstro has been tasked with designing a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), Ka-band active phased array terminal for communicating with commercial and government networks, and identifying barriers and solutions to integrating wideband active phased array terminals into NASA’s Near Space Network.

“We’re proud to leverage CesiumAstro’s existing expertise in active phased array space communications and explore innovative wideband solutions that can help guide NASA toward the successful commercialization of the Near Space Network,” CEO Shey Sabripour commented.