Viasat’s Real-Time Earth location in Japan. Photo: Viasat

Viasat has opened a new ground station for its Real-Time Earth (RTE) service in Hokkaido, Japan, hosted at Infostellar’s site. Viasat said the new 7.3 meter, Ka-band antenna will support high data rate remote sensing missions in polar and inclined orbits through the RTE network.

Viasat’s ground-station-as-a-service provides a fully managed ground network. The RTE RTE Ka-band footprint now includes sites in Sweden, Ghana, South Africa, and Australia. The company plans to expand the Ka-band capability with additional sites in Alaska and Argentina later this year. The RTE service provides global S- and X-band services at all sites.

Interstellar commented that the partnership benefits both Viasat and Infostellar clients.

“We’ve already proven our ability to rapidly integrate with a civilian space agency to receive Ka-band payloads over our fully automated commercial service and have multiple contracts with commercial satellite operators who understand the value proposition of Ka-band,” said Steve Tanous, vice president of Real-Time Earth at Viasat. “Ka-band more than triples the capacity available to downlink earth observation data, compared to traditional high data rate X-band, which translates into more effective and cost-efficient passes for satellite operators.”