July 29, 2002 AeroAstro,one of the providers of small satellites and related technology products, and Globalstar, the handheld satellite phone service, have successfully demonstrated a new, very low cost simplex modem that can be used for remote sensing and tracking by satellite.
The demonstration, conducted in late June and early July over the Globalstar satellite network, comes less than four months after the two companies first announced plans to develop the new modem, based on AeroAstro’s Satellite Enabled Notification System (SENS) technology. With the excellent performance of the system in this initial test, the companies expect the basic modem unit to be commercially available in the fourth quarter of this year.
The SENS Transmitter Unit is a pager-size simplex modem that can be configured and adapted for use in countless business applications that require sensing or tracking data to be sent from remote locations. By sending data over the Globalstar satellite network and through AeroAstro’s patented decoders at the Globalstar gateways, the modems enable reliable data transmissions in real-time from locations far beyond the reach of any ground-based network – a combination of features never before available in such a low-cost unit.
AeroAstro, a pioneer of micro and nanospacecraft applications in science, remote sensing, and communications, is a leader in innovative small-satellite applications that open the space frontier to a larger and more varied constituency. NASA, the Air Force, and commercial and university customers have all employed AeroAstro throughout its 14-year history.
