WASHINGTON — CesiumAstro, an organization that focuses on communications technologies for satellites and aircraft, will supply electronic phased-array payloads for seven U.S. military satellites built by Raytheon Technologies.
Raytheon is producing missile-detection sensor satellites for a low Earth orbit constellation that’s being acquired by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency.
CesiumAstro, based in Austin, Texas, announced May 4 it is going to provide Ka-band radio-frequency payloads to be integrated within the seven satellites that shall be a part of SDA’s Tracking Layer Tranche 1.
The Tracking Layer shall be connected via optical links in space with a Transport Layer mesh communications network.
SDA earlier this 12 months awarded Raytheon a $250 million contract for the seven satellites, to be delivered in 2025.
CesiumAstro’s founder and CEO Shey Sabripour told the agreement with Raytheon marks a significant milestone for the corporate because it validates its approach to commoditizing phased array technologies that traditionally have been highly customized and dear.
Antenna design ‘not bespoke’
Sabripour founded CesiumAstro in 2017 after a three-decade profession at Lockheed Martin and Firefly Aerospace. The venture-funded startup has about 140 employees and so far has raised greater than $90 million.
For SDA’s satellites, the corporate will provide the Vireo lively electronically scanned array (AESA) RF communications payload, developed for industrial and defense applications.
The multi-beam communications antenna, since it’s electronically steered, would allow SDA to more easily allocate Ka-band satellite capability to users world wide, Sabripour said. That’s a significant upgrade from legacy, single-beam systems which are optimized for connecting to single, static ground stations.
“You need to steer the beam to where the users are,” he said.
CesiumAstro is offering its electronic phased-array payload to other defense contractors planning to compete for SDA satellite procurements, Sabripour said.
He noted that the nation’s major defense firms for a long time have developed advanced phased array technologies but most products are highly customized and too expensive for industrial use.
“Now we have designed a system that just isn’t bespoke,” he said. “It may possibly cost a whole bunch of tens of millions of dollars in some cases to design a custom phased array for a ship, an aircraft or a satellite. We wanted to construct a software-defined system that could be scaled to different platforms and put together like Lego bricks.”
When Raytheon receives its payloads, “they are going to come right out of the box and so they can hook it as much as their satellites without having to have a team of PhDs who know tips on how to use this,” said Sabripour.
Developing L-band antenna
CesiumAstro recently won a $5 million contract from SDA to develop an lively electronically scanned array antenna that may support the military’s Link 16 tactical data network.
The Link 16 network has been used for a long time by the U.S. military and allies to securely share data. The road-of-sight network was never prolonged into space until SDA decided so as to add Link 16 payloads to its Transport Layer satellites. The Air Force also plans to exhibit Link 16 from space in an upcoming experiment.
Sabripour said the corporate plans to deliver a prototype antenna to SDA by summer or fall 2024. “SDA believes that lively phased arrays provide the aptitude they need for the longer term,” he said.