Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc., a National Security Solutions provider, has announced that in the second quarter of 2021 it delivered products supporting the satellite industry’s movement toward dynamic, virtualized ground systems to 23 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’ OpenSpace quantum products have been supporting satellite operators around the globe in tens of thousands of satellite passes per month.
Kratos’ OpenSpace 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.
Sales of quantum and SpectralNet products in Q2 included international commercial customers as well as support for key U.S. defense and intelligence programs and government projects for other nations. Seven new customers bought products in the OpenSpace family in Q2 as well as 16 returning customers purchasing additional quantum and SpectralNet units.
Kratos Vice President of Space System Sales, Mike Smith said that the OpenSpace quantum and OpenSpace SpectralNet product lines continue to make headway among satellite operators and communications service providers seeking to capitalize on the capabilities of virtual network environments to transform these critical operations. He also said that even classified government programs have recognized the reliability and security of OpenSpace products.
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 scalability to adapt more rapidly to changing missions and conditions. For example, where it can take weeks to deploy traditional 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.
