Bridgit Mendler's Northwood establishes ground station connection with Planet Labs in key test

Northwood Space, the startup founded by former Disney star Bridgit Mendler, passed an important test last week when its ground station unit successfully connected to orbiting Planet Labs satellites.

Operating from Planet's ground station in Maddock, North Dakota, the team successfully demonstrated that the startup's novel phased array antenna system can transmit data to and from satellites in orbit. This initial test focused on satellite telemetry and tasking and achieved bi-directional connectivity over five satellite passes.

“The purpose of our work is to build a more powerful ground network that can contribute to the industrialization of the space industry,” Mendler said in a recent interview. “We see connectivity as a fundamental pillar of space expansion.”

Northwood wants to solve what it calls the “bottleneck for space”: the terrestrial infrastructure that allows satellites to communicate with Earth and vice versa. Typically these ground stations are large parabolic antennas. They are a critical part of satellite operations, allowing satellite owners to track, send commands to, and receive data from spacecraft.

The colossal growth of the space industry has led to a correspondingly large increase in the volume of data transmitted to and from satellites. While some companies like SpaceX and Amazon build and operate their own ground stations, many satellite providers pay for capacity at ground station providers. However, these services and their ground stations are not always available. El Segundo, Calif.-based Northwood's solution is to mass produce a digital phased array system it calls “Portal” to enable “always-on satellite connectivity.”

Northwood's technology is designed for scale: unlike traditional parabolic antennas, Northwood says the antenna can be connected to multiple satellites at the same time. While traditional antennas must be physically aimed at a satellite, phased array antennas can have their beam direction controlled electronically and track multiple objects simultaneously.

But they are also designed for mass production, with the company initially aiming to build one antenna system per month. The systems are also much smaller than traditional ground stations – they have an area of ​​1.80 m per side – and could therefore be used in locations where the use of larger antennas is not possible.

The company was able to set up the ground station and complete testing in just six hours. Northwood aims to have the sites operational in the first half of 2025, ramp up production rates and roll out from there. The team is exploring locations both in the U.S. and internationally, Mendler said.

Northwood, which went public in February, has raised about $6 million in funding from investors including Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz and Also Capital.