John Gedmark

Incredible being hosted by NASA and @NASAAdmin at KSC for the UP Summit.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the future of space.

Next looking forward to MAX POWER 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Excited to announce that @NASA has selected Astranis for the first phase of NEXUS, a new program to replace the aging GEO satellites that provide mission-critical comms links for some of NASA's most important space assets.

That includes the International Space Station, Artemis, the Hubble Telescope, and NASA's Earth science fleet.

NEXUS will soon require an entire constellation of highly capable spacecraft, as the existing fleet of large GEO relay satellites reaches end of life and are retired.

If you didn't know NASA maintains its own fleet of massive GEO communications satellites I wouldn't blame you-- it's one of those pieces of high orbit infrastructure that has been quietly supporting everything NASA does for decades, but very much behind the scenes.

These satellites are necessary because important space assets like the International Space Station are in LEO, and don't pass over ground stations nearly as often as their operators would like. So the ISS and these other important NASA assets end up relaying most of their data through a constellation of large, expensive GEO satellites called the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, or TDRS, keeping them connected 24/7.

NASA awarded Astranis a contract with a maximum potential value of $264.3 million, in a firm-fixed-price contract that gives NASA the option to provide additional funding up to the award limit to advance from initial concept development and risk reduction to an in-orbit flight demonstration.

And that's just the beginning. We estimate NASA deployed the existing TDRS constellation at a cost of $13 billion-$15 billion in today's dollars. By working with a company like Astranis, they can replace that capability at a fraction of the cost, freeing up crucial resources for NASA's highest priority future missions, returning astronauts to the Moon and building the Moon Base.

Special thanks to our partners at NASA for their hard work on this program and for making this happen in record time. We're super excited about this mission and providing a capability that NASA, and our nation, badly needs.

Onward to the next phase. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Great to grab lunch with Space Force Chief @SpaceForceCSO General Schiess.

Space Force’s budget increase to $59B is in very good hands. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

There it is. China will attempt a human landing on the lunar surface sometime in 2029.

The space race is on my friends. I have full confidence the United States we can get there first under @NASAAdmin 's leadership.

But there is no time to waste.

He's not wrong. Space-based communications is now a critical part of full-stack sovereignty.