A rendering of Cobham Satcom’s Tracker antenna in a desert. Photo: Cobham Satcom

Telesat has tapped Cobham Satcom to supply the landing terminals for the Lightspeed Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) network. The companies announced Tuesday that Cobham will manufacture, integrate, and install its Ka-band Tracker 4000 terminals at landing stations around the world. 

Aneesh Dalvi, Telesat’s director of LEO Landing Stations and User Terminals, told Via Satellite that Telesat will deploy about 30 landing stations for the start of commercial service, and add more over time to adjust to demand. Each landing station will host multiple tracker antennas and baseband, network, and control systems.

The Tracker 4000 is a three-axis antenna housed inside a radome. Kirby Nell, vice president of Trackers and head of Business Development at Cobham, said the radome reduces electrical capacity needed. The terminals are low power, and take about 500 watts of power while other options require 30 kilowatts. The radome also offers protection from the elements, which will be important for the Lightspeed system in Northern Canada. 

Cobham has been working with Telesat for a number of years, and built an early prototype of the antenna for Telesat LEO phase one. 

“We’ve had a lot of experience with the antenna that’s deployed for LEO phase one. They’ve been a great partner for us to work with, along with our systems team and prime contractor,” Dalvi said. “The [antenna] performance is really good. The much lower power consumption helps reduce the overall operational expenses for landing stations, and it’s much better from an environmental perspective.” 

These Cobham landing terminals also support Globalstar’s ground network, and a number of Earth observation companies. 

Previously, Telsat announced a contract with Satixfy to supply the baseband modem equipment for the landing stations. Cobham will integrate the Tracker antennas with Satixfy’s baseband modems. 

“That is an architectural shift to the future,” Nell commented. “Typical ground stations have modems centralized back to a shelter. Telesat’s architecture deploys those out onto the antennas. Which helps [Cobham] that we don’t have to run expensive fiber site to site, we can haul Ethernet out to the antennas, to the modems, and go from there. Telesat is moving the ball forward, evolving as the networks evolve.”

Telesat and Cobham will now begin the development phase for some of the electronics that are specific to the Lightspeed network. Then, Cobham will build a prototype antenna testing. 

Telesat did not share the specific financial details of the project, but the operator is investing $5 billion into the system overall. Dalvi said further ground segment announcements are coming in the future. Telesat is targeting the market verticals enterprise, maritime, aeronautical, and government, and each will have different types of user terminals, specifically tailored to the market vertical, Dalvi said.