With the vision of making advanced spacefaring more accessible, NASA is expanding and strengthening its Near Space Network (NSN) commercial direct-to-Earth capabilities. Ready for the task, SSC has been selected as a new and vital service provider on the ground, strengthening the network through space-to-ground communications services in Earth Proximity (Region 1) and Beyond Cislunar (Region 3) regions.

Through the Near Space Network, NASA delivers mission-critical communication capabilities that allow spacecraft to transmit data directly to ground stations on Earth, to be acquired through firm-fixed-price service contracts. The ambition is to provide ground station services that are secure, reliable and affordable.

The services utilizing the network are critical to operating various robotic and human missions observing the Earth, studying the Sun, and exploring the Moon and beyond – ultimately leading to new discoveries, innovations benefitting developments of life on Earth, and providing answers about the Universe.

As one key to improving the NSN network capabilities, SSC will add communication capacity for low-Earth orbit to Geostationary orbit (from the Earth’s surface to ~36,000km) and Beyond Cislunar (from ~500,000 km up to 2 million km from the Earth’s surface), which includes Sun-Earth Lagrange points 1 and 2. The SSC ground stations utilized for this endeavor are North Pole (Alaska), Esrange Space Center (Sweden), South Point (Hawaii), Santiago Station (Chile) and Western Australia Space Centre (Australia).

“This partnership underscores SSC’s position as a leading global provider of space-to-ground services, including lunar and beyond communications, where our extensive experience and continuous capability upgrades ensure reliable connectivity. We have a long heritage from supporting NASA dating back to the early Apollo missions, and we look forward to delivering ground station services to exciting new NASA missions in the future” says Nicholas Priborsky, President of SSC Connect, the ground service division of SSC.

NASA’s NSN network acts as a crucial tool to fulfil the essential needs of NASA’s missions, orchestrating communications and navigation services, space links, and data transport. The services support missions throughout their entire lifecycle, providing requirements analysis, spectrum management, communications analysis, service agreements, mission design, mission planning, and support for launch, operations, and post-mission activities.

Read more about the NSN network at https://www.nasa.gov/near-space-network/