Under the scope of the partnership, 10 new antennas within the Viasat network will become immediately available to Atlas clients, with two additional antennas due to become available by the end of 2023.
“Through our partnership with Viasat we are expanding the global footprint of our federated network and demonstrating the usefulness of software in the satcom marketplace,” said Brad Bode, co-founder and chief technology officer of Atlas Space Operations.
“Developments like this are less about infrastructure implications, and more about the utility of software to enhance hardware capabilities. Through Freedom we are able to extract far greater value from existing hardware without incurring additional costs. Using software to create one common ground solution allows us to offer extensive capabilities atop data delivery, such as automated insight into pass performance, Co-pilot to enable rapid onboarding, a superb user interface, and our single TT&C (telemetry, tracking, and command) entry point in the cloud, no matter the site. Most importantly for our clients, Freedom is flexible and accessible through our unified interface, which means as our federated network grows, new antennas are immediately available to clients without any software changes on their end.”
The collaboration with Viasat enables Atlas to significantly expand its federated global ground network of 44 sites after adding 11 ground sites belonging to Amazon Web Service (AWS).
The federated network is operated by Atlas’ proprietary communications and management software, Freedom, which in turn enables, Atlas clients easily onboard their missions and manage data flow and pass execution from a single point of entry while the software abstracts away all hardware differences.
“We view our partnership with Atlas Space Operations as a true win-win for our companies and the industry,” said John Williams, vice president of Viasat RTE.
“We are already seeing enormous interest in this joint approach. Government customers flying a variety of assets appreciate the diversity of antennas available to them through a single interface, while commercial customers see the value in more antennas in different locations to significantly reduce the latency between data collection and data delivery.”
