Insider Brief
- Northwood Space is focused on on mass-producing ground stations, essential for connecting with satellites in orbit.
- Bridgit Mendler, once an actress and singer on the Disney Channel, serves as the company’s CEO.
- The company is backed by high-profile investors like Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz and Also Capital.
- Image:
The startup’s co-founders, from left: Chief Technology Officer Griffin Cleverly, CEO Bridgit Mendler and Head of Software Shaurya Luthra. (Northwood Space)
Used to being among stars, Bridgit Mendler, once a familiar face on Disney Channel, is now embarking on a mission to revolutionize how satellite data is transmitted to Earth. The former actress and singer has co-founded Northwood Space, a startup aimed at improving Earth-space communication, CNBC reports.
After years of academic pursuit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School, coupled with her experience at the Federal Communications Commission’s new Space Bureau, Mendler is stepping into the role of CEO at Northwood Space.
The El Segundo, California-based company is not focusing on rockets or satellites but on mass-producing ground stations, essential for connecting with satellites in orbit.
“The vision is a data highway between Earth and space,” Mendler told CNBC. “Space is getting easier along so many different dimensions but still the actual exercise of sending data to and from space is difficult. You have difficulty finding an access point for contacting your satellite.”
Northwood Space, co-founded with her husband Griffin Cleverly and Shaurya Luthra, aims to streamline this process. Both Cleverly and Luthra bring engineering expertise from their time at Lockheed Martin, with Cleverly also having experience from the Mitre Corporation and Luthra from satellite imagery venture Capella Space
The inspiration for Northwood came during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Mendler and her team experimented with homemade antennas, capturing data from NOAA satellites.
“While everybody else was making their sourdough starters, we were building antennas out of random crap we could find at Home Depot,” Mendler told CNBC, adding “For me, why the ground-side matters is because it actually is about bringing the impacts of space home to people.”
With an initial funding of about $6 million from high-profile investors like Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Also Capital, Northwood aims to address the space industry’s pressing need for efficient data transmission.
According to Cleverly, the space sector’s expansion has led to a “colossal” amount of data needing reliable, voluminous transmission to and from satellites. Luthra added that Northwood’s ground stations would offer rapid deployment and flexibility, resolving the bottleneck in shared ground station availability and significantly reducing the wait times currently experienced by satellite operators.
Northwood’s focus will initially be on servicing satellites in low Earth orbit, targeting companies that require ground station networks without the hefty investment of building their own. This move could dramatically improve the efficiency and availability of satellite data communication, marking a pivotal shift in how space data impacts our everyday lives.
For more market insights, check out our latest space industry news here.
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