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Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, Bridgit Mendler made a case for an often-overlooked part of the space industry: the equipment and networks on Earth that let satellites communicate with people and systems below. Her company, Northwood Space, is building that ground infrastructure—not rockets or satellites—with the aim of making satellite links easier to deploy, scale, and rely on.
What Mendler meant by scaling connectivity and resilience
Mendler spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on October 28, 2024. The event report framed her argument around a gap in the space industry: attention often goes to launch vehicles and spacecraft, while the ground network that makes them useful receives less notice. TechCrunch’s account of Mendler’s appearance describes her view that growing space activity needs a corresponding expansion of terrestrial connectivity.
“Scaling” means more than putting up additional antennas. Satellite operators need enough ground capacity to contact spacecraft, receive data, send commands, and deliver information onward to users. “Resilience” means improving the chances of maintaining or restoring those connections when a particular site, link, or piece of equipment is unavailable. Neither term means that communications are guaranteed or that a ground network can prevent every spacecraft failure or collision.
Why satellites need infrastructure on Earth
A satellite’s work depends on a chain that begins and ends with a radio link to the ground. A station contacts the spacecraft, receives telemetry and mission data, or transmits commands. Ground-network software and terrestrial connections then schedule, route, and deliver that information to the operator or customer.
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- A spacecraft may be operating normally but still be difficult to reach if a ground link is unavailable at the needed time.
- A station may have antenna capacity but lack enough terrestrial backhaul to move the data onward.
- Links can be constrained by scheduling conflicts, weather, interference, hardware or software faults, power interruptions, cyberattacks, or outages in terrestrial networks.
Northwood describes ground connectivity as a bottleneck as spacecraft capabilities and constellation sizes grow. The company says obtaining connectivity can take longer than building and launching spacecraft; that is its characterization of the problem, not an independently measured industry-wide comparison. Its broader premise is that a satellite’s value depends not just on reaching orbit but also on being reachable and able to deliver data.
What Northwood Space builds
Founded in 2023 by Mendler, Griffin Cleverly, and Shaurya Luthra, Northwood is based in El Segundo, California. Mendler is its co-founder and CEO. The company describes its offering as an integrated ground-infrastructure stack: antennas, modems, networking, software, deployment, and operations. Its ambition is for ground capacity to work more like cloud infrastructure, with capacity and routing that can scale without the delays of conventional procurement and integration. That is a strategic analogy, not a claim that satellite ground networks operate like public cloud services.
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Portal: electronically steered, multi-beam ground systems
Northwood’s flagship system, Portal, uses phased-array antennas. Unlike an antenna that depends only on mechanically turning a dish to point at a spacecraft, a phased array steers radio beams electronically. Northwood says Portal is designed to support multiple simultaneous transmitting and receiving connections, with spacecraft links across low Earth orbit (LEO), medium Earth orbit (MEO), and geostationary orbit (GEO). The company says the design can support dynamic tracking and handovers across orbits.
Northwood says a first-generation Portal system performed telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C) operations with Planet Labs in October 2024. In June 2025, the company reported that a higher-power version demonstrated 1 kilowatt of transmit power while receiving signals below one picowatt within the same antenna face. In December 2025, it said it produced eight full Portal arrays in one month. These are company-reported demonstrations and production milestones; they do not by themselves establish long-term availability, service-level performance, or customer economics.
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Prism: a parabolic option for high-volume links
In June 2026, Northwood announced Prism, a 2.4-meter parabolic antenna for high-volume, bidirectional connectivity. The company says it covers S-, X-, and Ka-bands and is intended for applications including enterprise backhaul, direct-to-cellular connectivity, and computing in space. Prism’s parabolic design indicates that Northwood is pursuing more than one antenna architecture: Portal’s phased arrays are designed for flexible multi-beam operations, while Prism targets high-throughput applications. Northwood’s press archive lists the product announcement and company updates.
What better connectivity can—and cannot—do for resilience
More ground sites and more available links can give operators additional opportunities to contact spacecraft, move data, and issue commands. Better access to telemetry and tracking information can also support operational awareness. In her 2024 argument, Mendler connected that awareness with identifying problems earlier and reducing collision risk. Those are potential benefits of better access to information, not proof that Northwood’s network is a complete space-traffic-management or collision-avoidance system.
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A distributed network does not remove the need for spacecraft autonomy, redundancy, independent mission-control safeguards, or dedicated collision-avoidance systems. Nor does it eliminate site-level risks: a ground station still needs suitable location and radio conditions, regulatory approvals, reliable power, terrestrial connectivity, security, and maintenance. Resilience is an improved ability to keep communications going or recover them—not immunity from failure.
How Mendler moved from entertainment to space technology
Mendler became widely known through Disney Channel’s Good Luck Charlie and her music career. She later studied at MIT and Harvard Law School. In the 2024 TechCrunch account, she connected an MIT Media Lab visit with her interest in technology, humanity, and meaningful progress, and described a longstanding interest in space. That background explains the contrast that made her appearance newsworthy; the company’s central challenge is the engineering and deployment of ground infrastructure.
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Northwood’s progress since the 2024 appearance
The company has announced financing, product milestones, a government contract, and deployment plans since Mendler’s TechCrunch Disrupt appearance. The distinction between completed milestones and targets matters: Northwood’s public announcements are the source for the figures below, and future capacity goals are not completed deployments.
| Date | What Northwood reported |
|---|---|
| October 2024 | A first Portal iteration performed TT&C operations with Planet Labs, according to Northwood. |
| April 2025 | Northwood announced a $30 million Series A. |
| June 2025 | The company reported a higher-power Portal demonstration: 1 kilowatt of transmit power and reception of sub-picowatt signals within the same antenna face. |
| December 2025 | Northwood said it produced eight full Portal arrays in one month. |
| January 2026 | The company said Portal units were operationally deployed across two continents. It also described two sites as ready for operations, five sites in build, and eight additional sites in progress across five continents. |
| January–February 2026 | A $100 million Series B and a $49.8 million U.S. Space Force contract were announced. TechCrunch reported the financing and contract on January 27; Northwood’s blog entry is dated February 18. |
| June 2026 | Northwood announced Prism, its 2.4-meter parabolic antenna. |
| Northwood’s end-of-2026 targets | More than 82 operational beams across 18 global ground sites, and production capacity exceeding a dozen Portal arrays per month. |
The Series B was led by Washington Harbour Partners and co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, according to Northwood’s announcement. The $49.8 million Space Force contract is intended to support the Satellite Control Network. Northwood says its systems are intended for launch and early operations, satellite tracking and control, and emergency support for tumbling or lost satellites. An independent TechCrunch report covered the financing and contract on January 27, 2026: TechCrunch’s report.
The business and technical test ahead
Northwood’s approach addresses a real operational need, but turning that approach into dependable global service entails more than manufacturing antennas. Phased arrays require careful engineering of electronic steering, simultaneous beams, power delivery, thermal management, and calibration. A network also needs secure software, backhaul, scheduling, site operations, and compatibility with customers’ spacecraft radios, protocols, encryption, and mission-control systems.
- Deployment: Modular systems may be quicker to install than traditional large antennas, but installation speed and cost at a single site do not establish how quickly a network can be built worldwide.
- Coverage: Geographic reach depends on suitable sites, permits, power, terrestrial links, and local radio conditions—not just the number of antennas.
- Reliability: The company has reported technical and production milestones, but long-duration availability, outage rates, service-level performance, and customer economics are not established by those announcements.
- Competition and interoperability: Northwood is operating in a market that includes established ground-station operators, antenna makers, satellite-network providers, and cloud-connected space-data platforms. Its integrated hardware-and-software proposition will need to work across varied customer systems.
- Government exposure: The Space Force contract is a meaningful announced award, while government procurement can bring long cycles, stringent security demands, and customer-concentration risk.
Northwood’s funding, customer test, contract, and product expansion show a company moving beyond an early concept, but its future site, beam, and production figures remain goals. The larger question is whether a standardized, software-driven ground layer can deliver dependable access to spacecraft at global scale—often enough, and economically enough, to become a routine part of space operations.
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