TAMPA, Fla. — Italian ground segment service provider Leaf Space has deployed its first ground station with a Ka-band link to meet demand for higher data rate applications.
Leaf Space said the triband Ka, X and S-band antenna at its Blönduós, Iceland facility entered service in June following successful tests with a remote sensing customer, which is using the Ka-band link to download larger amounts of data from orbit.
Leaf Space’s previous 26 antennas only provide services in the S, X and, in a limited number of locations, ultra high frequency (UHF) bands, supporting missions such as Earth observation and monitoring to communications with orbital transfer vehicles.
While X-band enables remote sensing downlinks with data rates up to 1.2 gigabits per second, the Ka-band antenna currently supports data rates up to 6 Gbps, meaning operators can download larger amounts of data per satellite pass.
Jonata Puglia, Leaf Space’s CEO, said current and potential customers are demanding faster speeds to downlink increasingly larger amounts of data generated in orbit.
“The remote sensing market is slowly but surely moving towards high data rate applications,” Puglia said, “even if the Ka-band satellite radios are not yet widely available, expensive and power-hungry.”
Leaf Space antennas in Blonduos, Iceland. Credit: Leaf Space
Leaf Space chose Iceland for its first triband Ka, X and S-band antenna because the country’s northern location provides optimal revisit times and coverage for customers most interested in Ka-band.
Puglia said Leaf Space also recently commenced operations with two antennas in Punta Arenas, Chile.
The decade-old company plans to install 10 more antennas before the end of the year, including two additional Ka-band antennas.
The expansion plan follows a $22 million Series B funding round last year for Leaf Space, which supports more than 100 satellites with a ground network spanning 18 locations worldwide.
Leaf Space customers include Canada-based connectivity provider Kepler Communications, hyperspectral Earth observation operator Pixxel of India and AST SpaceMobile, a venture developing a direct-to-smartphone network out of Texas.