Tom Choi’s AirspaceIX Launches Saturn Satellite Networks

Tom Choi, founder of Airspace Internet Exchange, and former CEO and founder of ABS. Photo: ABS

Airspace Internet Exchange (AirspaceIX) wireless technology company, founded by Thomas Choi, launched Saturn Satellite Networks (Saturn). Based in Delaware, the company is building the world’s first space qualified small Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellite platform named Nationsat.

Built entirely in the U.S.A. with heritage-based payload and bus components, Nationsat features a full-digital payload and 2.5 kW BUS design to help enable complete frequency agility and bandwidth channelization for its users, demanding wide-beam C- and Ku-band capacity as well as a High Throughput Satellite (HTS) version that provides over 80 Gbps. Saturn is led by a team of experienced team of satellite engineers; who have amongst the top three members of the executive team, boasts over 100 years of experience, and have manufactured over 60 GEO satellites at Boeing, Hughes, Lockheed Martin, and Intelsat. The Nationsat satellites are designed to be low cost and highly flexible, enabling users to save over 70 to 80 percent off of current market pricing for bent pipe GEO satellites, and its HTS models will cost less than $1M per Gbps delivered in orbit.

Tom Choi, the Executive Chairman of AirspaceIX and Saturn remarked “we’re extremely proud to announce Saturn’s Nationsat project. We have been quietly working on this since the end of 2017, to deliver the most advanced, flexible and cost optimized, GEO satellite platform in the world. Over 95 percent of satellite capacity users in the world use their satellites for domestic applications and for the first time ever, we have a satellite that has been designed and optimized for these end users and nations. We hope to serve as a vital cog in the global effort to bring affordable, satellite connectivity to the emerging markets of the world and to over 150 nations that have not been able to afford satellites in the past. This will change with the introduction to the market of Nationsat, by Saturn.”

Jim Simpson, the CEO of Saturn states “it has been very rewarding and an honor, teaming up with Tom and leading this incredibly talented and innovative Saturn team as its Chief Executive Officer. Our unique satellite system and service enables Nations that previously could not afford their own satellite systems, the ability to take advantage of the economics of ownership at a fraction of the cost of a traditional satellite system. Our ability to use a very small satellite platform, that efficiently utilize power, and takes advantage of the theory of the microcosm, with digital payloads, provides a revolutionary approach to delivering in-orbit reconfigurable broadband capacity.”