MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Norway’s Kongsberg Satellite Services is expanding its role in satellite operations for government and commercial customers.
The European Space Agency’s Arctic Weather Satellite was the first customer for KSAT’s Satellite Operations Service. KSAT also is operating Space Norway’s two-satellite Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission and GHGSat’s greenhouse-gas-monitoring constellation.
After years of preparation, KSAT established a Satellite Operations Center at its headquarters in Tromsø, Norway. A second facility in Denver “ensures we are resilient throughout operations,” Eivind de Badts, KSAT director of satellite operations, said Feb. 4 at the SmallSat Symposium here.
“Highly availability mission services are complex and resource intensive,” de Badts said. “A lot of our customers need customized solutions to solve their problems, using often fragmented service providers. We want to simplify that and help satellite owners in the process.”
KSAT now operates 13 satellites in orbit. Soon, the number will surpass 20, de Badts said. In addition, KSAT offers customer assistance in spacecraft design, testing, integration, verification, payload planning and data management .
“All of this is, of course, modular,” de Badts said. “Customers can mix and match according to mission needs.”
Anomaly Detection
For satellites in orbit, KSAT monitors health and performance, detecting and responding to anomalies. When an anomaly is detected, the company often relies on automated recovery procedures.
If that doesn’t work or there are no ready solutions, KSAT’s human satellite operators step in. After an anomaly is resolved, KSAT traces the root cause of problem to improve day-to-day operations, de Badts said.
“In the future, we want to deploy artificial intelligence to be even more proactive and see anomalies before they occur on orbit,” he added.
KSAT, long known as a ground segment provider, operates more than 330 antennas at 29 sites around the world.
