Atlas Space Operations in Traverse City, a provider of Ground Software as a Service (GSaaS), has been contracted by Millennium Space Systems of Boeing to support the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command’s Victus Nox experiment.
The goal is to see how quickly the Space Force can orbit a satellite capable of monitoring tactical developments above the atmosphere.
Atlas provided its global ground station network using its Freedom Software Platform to automate communications and enable near-real-time troubleshooting capabilities. Victus Nox required mission partners to maintain constant mission readiness to support launch and first contact followed by accelerated spacecraft commissioning within a condensed time frame.
“At Atlas, we pride ourselves on our highly reliable network and adaptable software, and we demonstrated that with Victus Nox,” says John Williams, CEO of Atlas Space Operations. “Without any compromises to support our existing government, civil, and commercial customers, we were able to fully support this record-breaking Space Force mission. Atlas demonstrated how it works with our mission partners to deploy and operate communications solutions more quickly than ever before.”
This was just the latest of Atlas’ projects with the U.S. government. Last September, Freedom Space Technologies in Colorado, a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlas, began providing ground-based satellite communications services to the U.S. Dept. of Defense and the National Security Space organizations.
In August, Atlas implemented its Freedom Ground Software as a Service system. Freedom is designed with three key objectives in mind. The first is to support infrastructure to lower the cost barrier and remove an engineering burden to make space-based communications and data processing more accessible and cost-effective.
The second is to change the way space-based communications and data are viewed by using software with continuing value-added feature releases to solve a hardware problem. Third, to allow anyone to gain access to space and satellite communications, no matter the size of the organization.
In July Atlas launched Freedom Space Technologies to provide solutions that support the success of government missions and advance the capabilities of the space industry.
Due to the growing government’s stated need to take advantage of commercial space capabilities, Freedom Space is purpose built to support unique requirements, including classified missions, of the United States Department of Defense and the National Security Space organizations.
By providing new and reliable ground-based satellite communications solutions, Freedom Space can help government entities to achieve strategic objectives and ensure mission success.
In March, Atlas partnered Viasat Real-Time Earth (RTE) to give Atlas and its clients access to 10 antennas within the Viasat network, with two additional antennas available by the end of 2023.
In February, the Rwanda Space Agency and Atlas entered a partnership to use a teleport antenna based in Rwanda. The 9.3-meter antenna system produces different frequency bands capable of servicing spacecraft on lunar missions.
In January, Atlas joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Solution Provider Program (SPP) to resell AWS services to Atlas end customers. Now Atlas clients have access to 11 additional ground sites, giving customers low-latency and low-cost access to AWS services so that they can quickly store and process their data.
