Hubble Network Plans Massive Satellite Upgrade To Create Global Bluetooth Layer

Hubble Network’s satellite-powered Bluetooth web is getting a large upgrade. 

The Seattle-based startup, which intends to bring to enterprises what Apple’s Find My has brought to consumers, has built a powerful caller phased-array receiver that will alteration what Hubble CEO Alex Haro calls a “true Bluetooth furniture astir nan Earth.” 

This precocious payload will alert connected 2 monolithic caller satellites from four-year-old Muon Space, called MuSat XL, which are slated to motorboat successful 2027. The first 2 MuSat XL spacecraft will present a 12-hour world revisit clip and observe Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals astatine 30 times little powerfulness than existent capabilities, Hubble says. If those numbers cookware out, it could materially widen artillery life for search tags and sensors present connected Earth. 

Those 2 satellites will shape nan backbone of Hubble’s BLE Finding Network for enterprises successful sectors ranging from logistics, infrastructure, and defense.

Hubble made history successful 2024 erstwhile it became nan first institution to found a Bluetooth relationship straight to a satellite. The startup’s proposition is compelling: alternatively of needing to bargain specialized hardware, customers will only request to merge their devices’ chipsets pinch a portion of firmware to alteration relationship to nan Hubble network. 

The benefits of nan space-based web are massive, Hubble argues: it tin supply visibility crossed nan globe, including successful distant areas, and offers a developer-friendly measurement to fto companies way assets without building immoderate further infrastructure. 

The institution presently has 7 spacecraft connected orbit pinch a target of having 60 satellites successful cognition by 2028. The semipermanent extremity is to upgrade nan full constellation to nan larger level buses because of their powerfulness and capacity upgrades, Haro said. 

It’s an fierce schedule, but Haro added that 1 logic Hubble chose to partner pinch Muon is nan latter’s expertise to quickly standard manufacturing to deed this goal, contempt being a young company. (A caller $146 cardinal backing round should help.) Gregory Smirin, president of Muon Space, told TechCrunch that nan company’s San Jose accumulation installation is being built retired to support accumulation of complete 500 spacecraft per twelvemonth by 2027. 

Hubble is nan first customer for nan 500 kilogram-class MuSat XL outer platform, which Muon says tin supply multi-kilowatt powerfulness to payloads, optical crosslinks, high-volume downlink, and “near real-time” communications for time-sensitive missions. The business besides signals a bigger push by nan institution to compete for much lucrative contracts pinch nan Department of Defense. 

The XL level “is a cleanable size and capacity for SDA Tranche missions,” Smirin said, referring to nan Space Development Agency’s inaugural to build retired a rocket defense constellation successful debased Earth orbit. “XL reflects some nan improvement of our method stack and our increasing domiciled successful delivering nan benignant of multi-mission spacecraft that programs for illustration SDA progressively trust on.”

Muon’s business exemplary tin beryllium thought of arsenic space-as-a-service: nan institution designs, builds, and operates satellites utilizing a vertically-integrated stack of hardware and software. The stack, called Halo, is meant to unfastened up abstraction entree for companies pinch promising payloads but nary liking successful building nan underlying outer architecture. In practice, that intends Hubble tin attraction connected processing nan BLE web while Muon handles nan outer platforms and ngo operations.