- Former Disney Channel star and singer Brigitte Mendler is launching a startup called Northwood Space with backing from investors including Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz.
- “Vision is the data highway between Earth and space,” Mendler told CNBC.
- Northwood aims to build satellite ground stations designed with high volume production and customer flexibility foremost in mind.
Brigitte Mendler is used to reaching millions of people with information. Now she wants to change the way satellite data reaches the ground.
Mendler, a former Disney Channel star and singer whose filmography includes “Good Luck Charlie,'' “Wizards of Waverly Place'' and “The Clique,'' has spent the past several years attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School. I learned it at school.
A self-described “family of engineers,” after a time at the Federal Communications Commission's new space agency where he was “completely immersed in space law,” Mendler is embarking on a new career in the space industry as CEO of startup company Northwood Space. I'm trying to start it. , based in El Segundo, California.
“Vision is the data highway between Earth and space,” Mendler told CNBC. “While space is becoming easier in many dimensions, the actual task of sending and receiving data to and from space remains difficult. Finding access points to communicate with satellites is difficult.”
Rather than building rockets or satellites, Northwood aims to mass-produce ground stations. A ground station, also called a teleport, is a typically large and often circular antenna that connects to a satellite in space.
Northwood has already attracted high-profile venture investors, raising about $6 million in initial funding from investors including Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Olds Capital.
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Mendler is building Northwood with two co-founders: Griffin Cleverley, the startup's chief technology officer, and Shaurya Luthra, head of software.
Mr. Cleverley and Mr. Luthra both worked as engineers at Lockheed Martin. The former most recently worked in communications at Miter Corporation, and the latter spent nearly four years building a ground station network for Capella Space, a satellite imaging venture.
The startup's co-founders, from left: Chief Technology Officer Griffin Cleverly, CEO Bridgit Mendler, and Head of Software Shaurya Luthra.
Northwood's name comes from a lake in New Hampshire, and Mendler said the idea for the company was born while spending time with family during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“While everyone else was making sourdough starters, we were building antennas out of random scraps we found at hardware stores and receiving data from… [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] It’s a satellite,” Mendler said.
“Why the ground side is important to me is because it's really bringing the effects of space back to people,” Mendler added.
Mass production of ground stations
He cleverly emphasized that the growth of the space industry now means that “enormous” amounts of data are moving to and from satellites.
“We need an approach that ensures these companies have the amount of data they need,” he told CNBC.
Northwood aims to build satellite ground stations designed primarily with rapid production and deployment flexibility in mind. Luthra said Northwood plans to deploy ground stations “within days rather than months” so that satellite operators don't have to spend time reconfiguring their networks to properly support what's happening on Earth. He said he is thinking of delivering it to .
“If you need a dedicated antenna, you have to wait 18 months for the antenna to be delivered, installed and built,” Luthra said.
The startup will initially target services for satellites in low Earth orbit for companies that don't want to spend money building their own ground station networks. Northwood aims to solve bottlenecks seen at shared ground stations that make it difficult for customers to find availability on existing teleports.
The Amazon Web Services Ground Station satellite dish at one of the company's data centers in Boardman, Oregon.
“Traditionally, when you wanted to use an antenna or a site, you first had to ask, 'Do you have availability or is it already rented out to people around the world?' In many cases, very important locations were already rented out,” Luthra said.
Northwood aims to offer customers a similar experience when renting server capacity from Amazon Web Services or Microsoft's Azure, avoiding the capital expense of building and operating their own servers.
“This allows space companies to be more responsive to use cases and missions that pop up,” Cleverly said.
The startup aims to conduct its first test connecting to a spacecraft in orbit later this year.
