Infostellar

Infostellar, a Japanese company established in 2016, is carving out a niche in the satellite ground segment by offering a cloud-based platform named StellarStation. This platform addresses the critical challenge of limited satellite-to-ground communication windows by aggregating and sharing the idle time of antenna networks globally. The company was co-founded by Naomi Kurahara, who serves as CEO, and Kazuo Ishigame and Toshihiro Hori. Kurahara's background as a satellite engineer, with experience in both electrical engineering and computer science from Kyushu University and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo, directly informs the company's mission. Her journey includes work on the Hodoyoshi-3 and Hodoyoshi-4 microsatellites, which solidified her understanding of the ground station bottleneck problem that Infostellar aims to solve.

The core of Infostellar's business is StellarStation, which functions as a ground station-as-a-service (GSaaS). Satellite operators can access a global network of ground stations through this single platform, significantly increasing their opportunities to downlink data and uplink commands without the prohibitive cost of building a dedicated, worldwide ground station network. Conversely, ground station owners can monetize their assets by renting out unused antenna time to other operators on the network, creating a sharing economy model for satellite communications. The platform provides a streamlined experience for operators, offering a standardized interface to interact with various antennas, thus reducing the operational complexity of managing communications with a satellite constellation. Infostellar's client base primarily consists of satellite operators in the Earth observation, remote sensing, and telecommunications sectors.

StellarStation has undergone significant development, moving from its initial alpha and beta versions to a commercial release. A key milestone for the company was a successful Series B funding round, which secured $12.5 million, enabling further expansion of its ground station network and engineering team. The company has established partnerships with numerous ground station owners across the globe, including prominent players like Viasat Real-Time Earth and an agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA), to integrate a growing number of antennas into its network. This expanding network is crucial to its value proposition, offering operators access to antennas in diverse geographical locations and across various frequency bands, such as UHF, S-band, and X-band.

Keywords: ground station network, satellite communications, GSaaS, sharing economy, antenna sharing, StellarStation, satellite operations, Earth observation, ground segment, space industry