IEEE Spectrum January 23, 2020
Small satellites in the low earth orbit depend on NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) to route signals from satellites to the correct ground stations when the satellite is on the other side of the earth. TDRSS is rarely accessible to companies, prohibitively expensive to use, and over 25 years old. To alleviate these problem a company in the US is creating a commercial replacement for TDRSS by building a constellation of many tiny satellites in LEO. The satellites will form the backbone of a space-based mesh network operating much like an Internet router in space. When fully deployed by 2022, Kepler’s network will include 140 satellites spread equally among seven orbital planes…read more.
Illustration: Eric Frommelt