Viasat’s Real Time Earth Station in Sweden. Photo: Viasat

Viasat is opening a Real-Time Earth (RTE) facility in Sweden in partnership with Arctic Space Technologies to bring polar capabilities to its ground-station-as-a-service (GSaaS) network. Arctic Space Technologies, which offers secure satellite data handling services, has agreed to establish and host Viasat’s RTE facility in Öjebyn, Sweden. The facility is expected to be operational by April. 

Viasat said the high-latitude RTE site is in an important geographic location for satellites flying in Sun-Synchronous Orbits (SSO), and gives those customer satellites a chance to connect to the ground station up to nine times per day. The site will host four Viasat full-motion 7.3-meter S/X/Ka-band antennas and associated infrastructure. It will also be co-located with an Arctic Space Technologies’ data center for enhanced edge compute capabilities. 

“Our relationship with Arctic Space Technologies plays an integral role in the expansion of our global RTE footprint and our ability to provide increased coverage in the critical polar geography,” said John Williams, vice president of Real-Time Earth at Viasat. “The new Swedish site will provide our RTE commercial and government customers with virtual access to their own 7.3m S/X/Ka-band antenna systems — at an ideal polar latitude — with secure backhaul communications and software defined radios configured specifically for every satellite pass.”

This will be Viasat’s first high-latitude RTE facility, and the sixth global site in the GSaaS network, a fully managed network that can serve satellites in S-, X- and Ka-bands. Viasat recently opened its first RTE in Africa, in Ghana.