🚀 Space Tech Boom! Northwood's $100M Shift 🛰️

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Northwood Secures $180 Million Boost to Revolutionize Space Data Management
Northwood Space, a company focused on disrupting the reception and transmission of space data, has secured a $100 million Series B funding round and a $49.8 million contract from the U.S. Space Force. The funding will accelerate the deployment of the company’s phased-array radar system, known as Portal, and support the augmentation of the Satellite Control Network, which provides telemetry and tracking for military satellites. “We made our last fundraise announcement in April of 2025, so less than a year, but there’s been a significant amount of activity and progress on the Northwood side that reflects the importance of ground as an enabler for pushing forward more capable missions on shorter timelines,” stated Bridgit Mendler, co-founder and CEO of Northwood, during a media roundtable.

Portal: A Game-Changing Antenna Technology
Northwood emerged from stealth as a small startup in February 2024, operating on the premise that there is a bottleneck in the capability of commercial ground stations to download increasing amounts of data gathered by space-based assets. Satellites in orbit are proliferating rapidly, a trend Northwood and its investors believe existing commercial ground stations—many of which date back a decade or more—are struggling to accommodate. In June, the company demonstrated its second-generation phased-array antenna, Portal, a technology that transmits a beam of radio waves in multiple directions without physical movement. Portal can simultaneously communicate with multiple satellites in various orbits.

Rapid Deployment and Scaling Potential
By the end of 2023, Northwood, based in El Segundo, California, had successfully built eight of these Portal arrays per month. Furthermore, in January, the company deployed operational Portal antennas across two continents, covering an area of 8 to 15 meters—equivalent to the capability of a 7-meter parabolic dish, according to co-founder and chief technical officer Griffin Cleverly. “Across our initial Portal sites, we’ll be able to manage a few dozen spacecraft,” Cleverly stated. “And with much larger-scale manufacturing anticipated by 2027, we’ll easily handle hundreds of satellites through our network.”

Space Force Embraces Northwood’s Solution
Northwood’s entry into the development of ground stations—a sector dominated by approximately half a dozen major players, including both established companies and newer entrants—arrived as the Space Force was undertaking efforts to modernize its Satellite Control Network, as noted in a government report published in 2023. The network currently maintains 450 daily contacts with satellites and supports their launch and operational activities. A recent report highlighted “sustainment and obsolescence issues” within the system, driven by increasing demands on the network. Seeking to address these challenges, alongside the growing proliferation of satellites in low-Earth orbit, the Space Force engaged Northwood, initiating work in September.

Future-Proofing the Space Data Landscape
Northwood’s Portal system is designed to serve both government and commercial customers, and the company anticipates future applications, including support for orbital data centers – a rapidly expanding area of interest. “We’re enthusiastic to support such initiatives,” said Mendler, noting that the volume of data moving to and from space was, and continues to be, significant, encompassing uses across communications, manufacturing, energy, and compute. “These use cases are surging,” she added, “and that has definitely borne out, whether we’re talking about communications, which has also been surging, or manufacturing or energy or compute, all of these different use cases in space, there’s a lot of appetite to address them.”

This article is AI-synthesized from public sources and may not reflect original reporting.