Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc., a leading National Security Solutions provider, announced today that in the first quarter of 2021 it delivered products supporting the satellite industry’s movement toward virtualized ground systems to 24 customers around the globe. These included products in Kratos’ quantum® and SpectralNet® lines, both of which are part of its OpenSpace™ family of dynamic, virtual ground solutions.
Kratos’ OpenSpace quantum products offer software versions of satellite ground system components which traditionally have been implemented as hardware, such as modems and front-end processors (FEP), needed to communicate with the satellite or its payload. Kratos’ quantum products have been in use by hundreds of satellite operators around the globe supporting tens of thousands of satellite passes per month.
Kratos’ SpectralNet products provide the on-ramp to modern virtual ground operations by reliably digitizing the Radio Frequency (RF) signals from the satellite into an Internet Protocol (IP) format that can be processed by digital systems running in cloud, on-prem and hybrid environments.
OpenSpace quantum products (referred to as Virtual Network Functions or VNFs) are not only less expensive than the hardware they replace, they operate at lower cost and with greater flexibility to adapt more rapidly to changing missions and conditions. For example, where it can take weeks to deploy ground system hardware, quantum VNFs can be deployed and configured to support different missions in just hours. Kratos’ OpenSpace Platform, the most advanced line in the OpenSpace family, can go even further, enabling satellite operators to deploy, configure and adapt entire networks in just minutes using its orchestrated software-defined network (SDN) architecture.
Sales of OpenSpace quantum and OpenSpace SpectralNet products in Q1 were concluded with satellite operators, manufacturers and service providers including some of the world’s largest operators, New Space companies, leading prime contractors for the U.S. government and directly to government agencies.
According to Kratos Vice President of Product Management, Greg Quiggle, “The OpenSpace quantum and OpenSpace SpectralNet product lines are stepping stones for space companies seeking to take advantage of digital transformation of their ground systems to support new goals and opportunities. Our recently introduced OpenSpace Platform takes the underlying technologies developed for quantum and SpectralNet to another level, delivering a fully integrated approach to ground operations.”
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