Solstar Space (Solstar), the company making persistent in-orbit communications available, announces its Deke Space Communicator (Deke) designed for narrowband communications for suborbital and orbital spacecraft and launch vehicles has been recognized with the New Space Innovation Award during MSUA’s 2022 Satellite Mobile Innovation Awards. Deke is designed to be about the size of a deck of cards, and engineered to be seamlessly integrated into CubeSats, SmallSats, space stations, launch vehicles, and more to provide reliable, secure two-way persistent communications with launch vehicles and on-orbit assets from any internet connected device anywhere on Earth or in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). It also provides reliable and resilient operational status and alerts for LEO satellites to Mission Operations Centers (MOC).
“We are thrilled that the Deke Space Communicator has been recognized by the respected panel of judges for this year’s MSUA Satellite Mobile Innovation Awards. Solstar is addressing one of the biggest challenges for space-based communications today – the up to 90% of the time where there aren’t any communications with an orbiting space-based asset,” says M. Brian Barnett, Founder and CEO, Solstar Space Company. “Once activated, the Deke Space Communicator will provide narrowband connectivity and airtime service to meet the requirements of payload managers, satellite operators, and a broad range of research and IoT use cases. It’s not necessary to launch any new communications satellites to provide this service. There are plenty of great commercial assets already on orbit and a lot more on the way. Leveraging existing commercial satellite networks saves time and money for our customers,” continues Barnett.
“The Deke Space Communicator is a persistent, bi-directional critical data relay that provides narrowband communications. It is small, lightweight, space-hardened, and designed to be installed on a broad range of spacecraft from satellites to space stations,” says Paul Frey, Director of Product Development, Solstar Space. “The Deke Space Communicator is a perfect solution for IoT applications, medical monitoring for crew and research, command and control, and for persistent management of on-orbit payloads and experiments. Deke is also a great communications solution for redundancy. We expect to fly our Deke Space Communicators as early as 2023,” continues Frey.