Northwood Space, the Torrance, CA-based satellite ground segment startup, announced yesterday that its production terminal—called Portal—passed its first operational tests ahead of deployment later this year.
Founded in 2023 by CEO Bridgit Mendler, CTO Griffin Cleverly, and head of software Shaurya Luthra, Northwood has raised $36M for plans to develop modular, scalable and, most importantly, high-throughput ground stations to pull down more data from satellite networks.
Report card: On June 5, the company’s Portal terminal collected data broadcast from US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program spacecraft in orbit. Northwood didn’t have a license to test its transmission capabilities live. Executives say, however, the antenna has been validated in the lab and through a a subscale prototype test with Planet satellites last October.
The plan is to offer satellite connectivity as a service to operators. “We view these pieces of hardware as like the nodes of the network, but the core is actually software and orchestration and scheduling,” Cleverly said.
Proof point: Portal—a 9-by-5 ft flat panel—is the company’s first product. It’s an orbit-agnosic terminal that is capable of 1 kW of transmit power while receiving signals fainter than a picowatt. The modular terminal can be arrayed in banks of six or eight to deliver higher power levels to reach GEO satellites.
Array of Light: The key technology here is a fully digital, phased array antenna, a design that uses software to precisely control transmitting power and waveforms generated by the terminal—even to connect to multiple satellites at once. While ground segment companies like Norway’s KSAT and Sweden’s SSC have announced plans for similar technology, BlueHalo’s Badger—designed for the defense market—is one of the few comparable pieces of hardware on the market.
Network effect: Northwood is building out a factory that the company expects will produce 12-16 Portals every month. The company aims to build 30 sites across the globe in the next two years, with an initial deployment by the end of this year. Northwood’s team hope to benefit from the ease of installation as they roll out their network, with short lead times a key part of their value-add.
”We’re not laying concrete, we’re not doing large construction projects—these things get dropped off the back of the truck and turn on,” Luthra told Payload.
Correction: This story misreported Northwood’s headquarters; the company has moved from El Segundo to Torrance, CA.
