Northwood Space, the startup led by former TV star and singer Bridgit Mendler, passed its first major development test last week by joining forces with Planet Labs Image satellites in orbit.

“We are building this global network to send data to satellites based on the phased array technology that we have now successfully validated, both in the lab and in the field,” Northwood CEO Mendler told CNBC.

Northwood, based in El Segundo, California, was unveiled earlier this yr and is targeted on the bottom side of the space connectivity equation. Ground stations are the critical link for data transmission to and from orbit and are particularly crucial for the operation and control of satellites.

The startup is developing ground stations for mass production and is betting that its phased array-based system, called Portal, can outperform the parabolic antennas traditionally utilized by ground station firms. It is predicted that Portal will have the option to hook up with as much as ten satellites concurrently, versus the everyday one to a few for dish antennas.

“For Northwood, we want to introduce a new standard for enterprise connectivity,” said Mendler.

The ground station-as-a-service, or GSaaS, market offers firms the power to administer the Earth-based side of space infrastructure. In this sense, Amazon has launched its AWS Ground Station service and Satellite communications giant Eutelsat has proposed an almost $1 billion deal within the industry.

Mendler's Northwood desires to take GSaaS a step further and eliminate what she sees as “connectivity stuck in another era” of blackouts and “super-expensive networks.”

“By analogy with the wireless industry – where we draw parallels to how cell towers and such shared assets end up being extremely vertically integrated players – they ended up moving and selling their assets to the cell tower companies. We expected that the joint model would be a success.

In her view, ground stations are “the third leg” of space technology, while the opposite two are rockets or cargo vehicles and satellites or orbital infrastructure.

“The industry is really at a point where there is a lot of appetite for growth, and this is something we can really bring to the industry and accelerate progress,” Mendler said.

Last week, the Northwood team was in distant Maddock, North Dakota, testing its prototype antenna — “affectionately called Frankie,” Mendler noted — by connecting to a planetary satellite in orbit.

The attempt is often known as the TT&C (telemetry, tracking and control) test, wherein Northwood goals to make contact with the planet's satellite in each S-band and X-band.

“We were able to achieve two-way communication with Planet's satellites and achieve nominal communication for them throughout the duration of a pass. They were able to conduct their operations as they would on their own system,” Mendler said.

Northwood designed and built Frankie in 4 months, the corporate said, and was capable of deploy the antenna “from truck to live test in the sky” inside six hours. Planet, which has greater than 150 imaging satellites in orbit, called Northwood's test a “major milestone.”

“Not only is Northwood solving historical problems such as cost and size, but it has also built and successfully field-tested its phased array antenna faster than previously thought possible. We are proud to be part of this breakthrough in ground station technology,” said Joseph Das Breu, senior director of worldwide ground networks at Planet, in an announcement to CNBC.

Northwood developed two antennas for its Portal system, a bigger 5-by-5-foot S-band frequency antenna and a smaller 18-by-18-inch X-band antenna.

The company plans to deploy portal sites able to supporting as much as 10 simultaneous satellite links at data rates in excess of 1 gigabit per second per beam starting next yr. Northwood is currently evaluating locations within the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand for its first portal locations.

“Performance-wise, we accomplished everything we hoped for,” Mendler said, adding that Northwood is “really grateful for that.” [Planet’s] Participation and support throughout the test.”

“It just opens up a lot of things about the next chapter,” Mendler said.

SpaceX is launching a compact version of its Starlink antennas, which the corporate is promoting as a mobile option for its satellite web customers.

“Starlink Mini is a compact, portable kit that fits easily in a backpack and is designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet on the go,” SpaceX said in a customer email on Wednesday, which CNBC was capable of see.

The company is offering a “limited number” of the Starlink Mini antennas in a pre-release version for $599 each. That's $100 greater than the bottom model “standard” antenna sold with its residential service, though the corporate is striving to bring the value down.

“Our goal is to lower the price of Starlink, especially for those in the world for whom connectivity has been unaffordable or unavailable at all,” SpaceX wrote in the e-mail.

In addition to the initial hardware cost, service for a Starlink Mini effectively costs $150 per thirty days — because SpaceX offers service for a Mini as a further package for $30 per thirty days, along with a residential service for $120 per thirty days. The “Mini Roam” service “can be used anywhere in the United States,” but has a cap of fifty gigabytes of information per thirty days, with Starlink charging $1 per gigabyte for extra data.

The Starlink Mini antenna is in regards to the size and weight of a laptop, weighing just over two kilos and measuring about 12 x 10 x 1.5 inches. It's about half the scale and one-third the load of Starlink's standard antenna.

SpaceX's email said Starlink Mini has a built-in Wi-Fi router and uses “lower power” than its other antennas, but still achieves download speeds of over 100 megabits per second.

The email didn’t specify when Starlink Mini deliveries would begin. In a post On social media, Michael Nicolls, vice chairman of Starlink Engineering, said the corporate is “ramping up production” of Starlink Mini and that it’s going to “be available in international markets soon.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote in a single post Monday that establishing a Starlink Mini took lower than five minutes.

“This product will change the world,” Musk said.

SpaceX has been steadily expanding its Starlink network and product offerings since launching the service in 2020. According to the corporate, there are currently about 6,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, connecting greater than 3 million customers in 100 countries. SpaceX initially targeted residential customers but expanded into other markets – including national security, enterprise, mobility, maritime and aviation – and disrupted the prevailing satellite communications sector.

NASA released photos of parts of Dubai and Abu Dhabi before and after the United Arab Emirates was hit by record rainfall last week, causing dangerous flooding and paralyzing large parts of the country.

The images were captured on Friday by NASA Earth Observatory using Landsat data US Geological Surveyshow large areas of water throughout the desert and concrete landscape of the UAE where there was none before – it almost looks as if small lakes have been created.

“Some areas remained flooded on April 19 Landsat 9 “It passed over the region for the first time since the storms,” NASA wrote on its Earth Observatory website.

Flash floods that formed on April 16 caused cars to develop into submerged in water and in some areas completely submerged, causing a whole bunch of motorists to desert their vehicles on the road to flee rising water levels.

The normally dry Gulf desert land was hit with a couple of yr's value of rain in lower than a day, greater than ever in a single storm since records began for the UAE in 1949.

NASA's first image shows a part of Dubai and surrounding areas from April 3, captured by Landsat 9, an Earth remark satellite operated by a partnership between the US Geological Survey and NASA. The second image was taken on April 19, when Landsat 9 flew over the region for the primary time because the country's record rainfall.

The second image, captured by the satellite's OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager 2), “shows flooding in numerous parts of the emirate. The image is presented in false colors (bands 6-5-3) to highlight the presence of water blue,” NASA wrote.

The deluge closed schools and businesses, grounded a whole bunch of flights and destroyed cars, stores and other property. It threw each day life into chaos as many residents lost power and running water or were trapped either of their homes, airports or wherever they were when the storm hit.

The United Arab Emirates' National Center for Meteorology said as much as 250 millimeters – 10 inches – of rain was measured in eastern parts of the country in lower than 24 hours. In contrast, the United Arab Emirates typically receives 5.5 to eight inches of rainfall per yr in a full yr.

Due to an absence of drainage infrastructure and the incontrovertible fact that the country's urban spaces are paved, much of the water couldn’t drain away, worsening flooding in lots of areas.

The country's cleanup efforts proceed and diverse problems remain in some areas where infrastructure has been severely damaged and lots of residents say they still haven’t any running water or electricity.

A multi-story apartment constructing near the border between Dubai and the Emirate of Sharjah cracked and tipped over because of structural damage was spared by the storm and was completely evacuated on Friday because of the danger of collapse.

The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates has issued a directive to local banks and insurance firms to permit loan repayments to be deferred for six months to assist residents and businesses affected by the flooding.