SES, Hughes demonstrate satellite internet on General Atomics surveillance drone - SpaceNews

An MQ-9B remotely piloted craft successfully communicated with SES satellites successful mean and geostationary Earth orbits

WASHINGTON — SES and Hughes successful a objection past period installed outer net work connected a General Atomics surveillance drone that the institution sells to the U.S. subject and allies.

The companies announced Nov. 10 that the MQ-9B SkyGuardian remotely piloted craft successfully communicated with SES satellites successful mean and geostationary Earth orbits. The drone stayed connected the crushed and did not fly, but the companies said the objection showed however the subject could usage high-throughput outer connectivity to transmit live-video streams faster and much reliably than accepted single-orbit networks. 

The objection took spot Oct. 20 astatine General Atomics’ formation operations installation successful El Mirage, Calif. 

“As we grow into caller and much intricate payloads for our RPA, we’ll necessitate higher information rates that supply the bandwidth, information and robustness to run our sensors,” said Fred Darlington, elder vice president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

“This is the archetypal clip this multi-orbit capableness was integrated onto the MQ-9 platform,” said Will Tong, SES vice president of strategical authorities initiatives.

SES operates a web of satellites successful some mean and GEO orbits. Hughes Network Systems provided a software-defined modem and web absorption bundle to alteration roaming crossed satellites.  

Tong said 1 of the challenges of connecting craft to satellites is the size and value of the terminals. In this objection SES utilized a tiny terminal that delivered throughput of implicit 15 megabits per second. 

“Right present remotely piloted craft person debased information complaint L set arsenic their secondary satcom nexus and that cannot transportation the magnitude of information that is needed to bring captious information from the RPA to the ground,” helium said. The Hughes modem, helium said, switches the satcom nexus astir instantaneously, which does not hap now. “If an RPA relation wants to power links for immoderate benignant of interference oregon jamming, it needs to beryllium done manually and that takes time.”

Some equipped versions of the MQ-9s drop missiles connected targets, but astir behaviour 24/7 reconnaissance implicit areas of interest. Its cameras transmit unrecorded video to quality units oregon bid centers hundreds oregon thousands of miles away. 

Technologies disposable contiguous let the subject to get much information from RPAs without having to measurement the craft down with dense equipment, Tong said. “Integrating a tiny signifier origin antenna — astir a 3rd of the size of the existent antenna — portion showing implicit four-times much passim than existent capabilities opens the realm of the possible,” helium said. 

RPAs presently person constricted connectivity of anyplace from 2 to 10 megabits per second, depending connected their antennas, said Tong. And they endure from a deficiency of resilience from losing a outer link. This limits however overmuch information tin beryllium transmitted and however fast, helium said, peculiarly high-resolution images and video.