Transcelestial’s Centauri device
Singapore-headquartered last-mile internet connectivity startup Transcelestial Technologies recently inked a collaboration with commercial space station Axiom Space. The move aims to redefine space communications for government and commercial customers in Southeast Asia.
Together, both parties aim to revolutionise space-based cloud infrastructure interoperability using optical inter-satellite links.
e27 spoke with Transcelestial founder and CEO Rohit Jha to learn more about this collaboration.
Below are the edited excerpts:
How did the collaboration between Transcelestial and Axiom Space come about? Can you provide more details on the specific objectives and goals of the collaboration?
Transcelestial was introduced to Axiom Space by our investor EDBI. The Axiom Space team was quite impressed by our ongoing capabilities both technically and operationally in using lasercomms for delivering ubiquitous internet coverage together with our telco partners. We continued exploring this and saw a distinct opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths.
Our objectives include developing laser communication technologies for space applications, enhancing the capabilities of orbital data centres, both large-scale and edge data centres in orbit and achieving significant milestones related to delivering a secure fabric in space in the coming years. This will include some in-orbit testing next few years followed by operational testing and deployments with our customers.
Could you elaborate on the technical challenges that need to be addressed to achieve interoperability between laser comms networks and orbital data centres?
We want to further the goal of creating an interplanetary network.
Step one is establishing a network that can effectively handle Data in Rest and Data in Motion.
Also Read: Transcelestial gets US$10M funding boost to expand its lasercomms tech into US, ramp up in Asia
Data in Motion will be delivered by our Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite “Ring” network of relays in orbit using our proprietary Laser Communication terminals embedded in LEO satellites. These terminals are relayed to other LEO satellites, space stations, and later, other Middle Earth Orbit (MEO) and Geostationary Equatorial Orbit (GEO) installations in deep space. A network of optical ground stations distributed around key cities will keep our terrestrial internet infrastructure always connected to our ring wrapping the Earth.
Data in Rest is enabled by full Cloud capabilities lifted into Orbit. This includes the independent ability to compute, store, cache, and provide accelerated insights (via GPUs and FPGAs). This capability needs ultra-high bandwidth provided by laser comms (eg datacenters today require stable power and high-speed fibre optics connectivity).
To make this happen, the current high-density commercially available storage and compute solutions need to be rapidly tested, protected and qualified in space, especially in LEO.
What specific technologies will be shared and developed during the technical exchange with Axiom Space?
From Transcelestial’s side, we will be sharing an optical terminal capable of autonomously and independently connecting to and receiving signals from both in-orbit (other LEO vehicles) and on-ground infrastructure. This is technology being built in Transcelestial’s Singapore headquarters.
Along with it, there will be a network management system which will intelligently be able to schedule connections between a test vehicle (either Transcelestial’s or client’s) in orbit with Axiom’s test vehicle.
As a secondary objective, we will also be testing connections down to our mass-manufacturable prototype Optical Ground Station which is currently being tested and developed at our Singapore headquarters.
How do optical inter-satellite links improve space communications compared to traditional methods?
Laser inter-satellite links offer significantly higher data transfer rates compared to traditional radio frequency (RF) methods (technical note below).
For example, traditional RF technologies on earth and space typically only do up to 1Gbps and in some cases 10Gbps as state of the art. We started our first product with 10Gbps data rate capabilities, testing 40Gbps now and on a path to do 100Gbps-1Tbps shortly, even beyond.
Also Read: ‘Internet penetration won’t be enough to bring everyone online’: Rohit Jha of Transcelestial
Greater bandwidth availability allows for the transmission of larger volumes of data, supporting more complex and data-intensive applications. Laser links also provide a higher level of security due to the difficulty of intercepting laser signals compared to RF signals, making it an ideal choice for primary connectivity for any sensitive, national security-related use cases. This is nothing different from the concept of “lasers in pipes” aka the fibre cables we use today, which already power the connectivity for the world’s undersea and data centres.
How does this collaboration fit into Transcelestial’s long-term strategic vision for space communications? What potential industries and applications do you foresee benefiting the most from space-based cloud infrastructure and optical communication networks?
Transcelestial’s mission is to build capabilities (technology and services) that are needed for humanity’s communication needs. We first identified what we now call the Global Internet Distribution problem — a systematic series of complex failures at the urban level, inter-city level and inter-country to continent level that results in most people in the world being “under-connected” (i.e. poor access to bandwidth, bad latency to the nearest multi-cloud gateway and very high price to pay).
We need to solve these challenges both at an urban level distribution alongside a national and international level distribution to address all of the problems. While this provides a new era of a secure internet fabric, away from the crumbling unreliable and insecure Internet distribution we are used to, it is also simultaneously poised to uplift billions into a secure, affordable internet here on Earth and scale to support our efforts in deep space.
How do you anticipate this collaboration will impact the commercial, civil, and defence markets in Southeast Asia? What kind of new products and services do you expect to emerge from the successful deployment of orbital data centres and space optical communications?
We hope to test a variety of services such as faster internet exchanges in Southeast Asia, more efficient and low cost per bit Content Delivery Network capabilities and very immediately, provide a platform to serve emerging small to medium AI models to sit nearer to the people who will be interacting with it.
We look forward to working with more space station and orbital structure providers in using this upcoming capability to generate early revenue by converting them to internet exchanges or neutral host cloud exchanges, with better network access to the worldwide population than the data centres of today. With a global lower latency and edge data centre capabilities in LEO, we also encourage many young minds and enterprises to think of ways new apps, technologies and services can be brought to commercial, civil and defence markets.
Also Read: Transcelestial aims to help telcos roll out 5G rapidly and cost effectively in SEA
Closer to home, when you consider the likes of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, Southeast Asia collectively has more than 30,000 islands. For now, every network requires an undersea cable which is complex to build and maintain. We have used lasercomms on terrestrial areas to deliver connectivity to Sabah, Sarawak, and Penang in Malaysia (recently commended by Malaysia’s Communications Minister). We expect our space capabilities to allow us to expand these capabilities to islands further away in these archipelagoes.
How does Transcelestial plan to leverage this partnership to grow its commercial networks and diversify its supply chains? What role does Singapore’s Office for Space Technology & Industry (OSTIn) play in supporting this collaboration?
We are focused on vertically integrating as much as possible to allow for engineering and cost efficiencies. Our goal, with the help of Austin and other local partners, would be to establish a local manufacturing and supply chain which can vertically facilitate build-up. We also have very trusted partners providing various subsystem components for our CENTAURI terrestrial platform today. They have worked with us to achieve scale and cost that we desire and we are proceeding to work with or build a similar mindset in the ecosystem when it comes to scale.
There are various ways, financially and qualitatively, the team at OSTIn has worked with us to get here – working on the feedback from the ecosystem to change and adapt to the needs of many young nimble but promising startups here building rockets, engines, satellite bus and other technologies. We look forward to continue working with the team.
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