Orbital Gate

Hardware

Mobile Ground Station

A complete ground station in an ISO 40 ft high-cube container. It ships by sea, sets up where it is needed and belongs to the country that hosts it.

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Render of a Mobile Ground Station with two roof dishes in a desert canyon.
Render

The container

Moves and stacks like any container

  • ISO 40 ft high-cube, 12 192 × 2 438 × 2 896 mm, with ISO corner castings and a CSC plate. It lifts, stacks and travels by container ship and truck.
  • Ready for transit: dishes, phased-array panels, the lightning mast and the roof guard rail fold or come off.
  • On site: it sits on a level concrete pad and connects through an end-wall gland plate to shore power, data and fibre.
  • Host-country owned: the station belongs to the country that hosts it.
Exploded render of Unit 001 · POC in four labelled layers: roof hardware, services, the equipment in bays A to E, and the 40 ft high-cube shell.
Render

Inside

The five bays

Render of Unit 001 · POC with the side cut away: the NOC, compute, RF, power and HVAC + I/O bays, with the dish, yagi, guard rail and masts on the roof.
Render

  • A

    NOC

    • Operator positions with dual monitors and a video wall
    • The fire-suppression cylinders
    • The personnel door

  • B

    Compute

    • A 42U rack against the back wall: GPU compute, storage chassis, network switch, patch panel and KVM
    • Front-access equipment only

  • C

    RF

    • The RF rack: software-defined radio and modem chassis, up/down converters, LNA control, HPAs and a GPS-disciplined frequency and time reference
    • A wall panel of RF connectors, with coax risers to the roof or the feed

  • D

    Power

    • LFP battery cabinets behind an automatic transfer switch, which moves between shore or generator power and the batteries with no interruption to the load
    • An overhead DC busway

  • E

    HVAC + I/O

    • The HVAC cabinet, with a supply duct over the bays and a diffuser in each
    • The I/O panel for shore power, data and fibre

Roof and site

Everything a station needs on site

GNSS timing antenna
Disciplines the station clock and timing reference.
Weather station
Wind data feeds the antenna stow logic.
Lightning protection
An air terminal on a mast that comes off for transit.
CCTV
A perimeter camera on a pole at the roof corner.
Roof access
A guard rail that comes off for transit, and an end-wall ladder.
Fire and smoke
Fire suppression with a nozzle in every bay, and a smoke detector in each.
Cabling
An overhead cable ladder, colour-coded orange for power, teal for RF and timing, and blue for data.
Site connection
A level concrete pad, and an end-wall gland plate for shore power, data and fibre.

Configurations

Six ways to build the station

Roof-mounted dishes and phased arrays for low-earth orbit, and ground-mounted dishes on their own foundation for GEO and MEO links.

  • Render of Unit 001 · POC: a 40 ft container with a tracking dish and a crossed yagi on the roof, on a concrete pad by the sea.
    Render

    Unit 001 · POC

    Single tracking dish

    • 2.4 m S/X tracking dish that works one satellite per pass and folds for transit
    • UHF/VHF crossed yagi on its own rotator for cubesat TT&C
    • UHF
    • S
    • X
  • Render of the Core unit: a 40 ft container with phased-array panels on the roof.
    Render

    Core unit

    Phased-array primary aperture

    • Dual phased-array panels on posts above the roof
    • Multi-beam, with no moving parts
    • Panels fold flat for transit
    • UHF
    • S
    • X
  • Render of Max satellites: a 40 ft container with tilted phased-array panels and a yagi on the roof.
    Render

    Max satellites

    Multi-beam phased arrays

    • Four S/X phased-array panels tilted north, south, east and west, plus UHF
    • Several beams per panel: built for breadth of contact
    • Panels fold flat for transit
    • UHF
    • S
    • X
  • Render of Max throughput: a 40 ft container with two dishes on the roof.
    Render

    Max throughput

    Ka + X high-rate dishes

    • A 2.4 m Ka dish and a 2.4 m S/X dual-polarisation dish
    • Built for raw downlink capacity for earth-observation operators
    • S
    • X
    • Ka
  • Render of GEO/MEO 4.5 m: a 40 ft container beside a ground-mounted 4.5 m dish.
    Render

    GEO/MEO · 4.5 m

    Ground-mounted dish

    • 4.5 m dish on its own foundation beyond the container end
    • Cassegrain feed cluster for S, X, Ku, Ka and L-band receive
    • HPAs, LNAs and converters at the feed; power, RF and fibre back to the container by duct
    • S
    • X
    • Ku
    • Ka
    • L rx
  • Render of GEO/MEO 7.3 m: a 40 ft container beside a ground-mounted 7.3 m dish.
    Render

    GEO/MEO · 7.3 m

    Ground-mounted dish

    • 7.3 m dish on its own foundation beyond the container end
    • Cassegrain feed cluster for S, X, Ku, Ka and L-band receive
    • HPAs, LNAs and converters at the feed; power, RF and fibre back to the container by duct
    • S
    • X
    • Ku
    • Ka
    • L rx

Reference

Bands

BandUsed for
UHF / VHFCubesat TT&C
S-bandCommand and telemetry
X-bandTT&C and earth-observation downlink
Ku-bandSatellite links, GEO and MEO
Ka-bandHigh-rate links
L-band (receive)GNSS and navigation signal monitoring

Want the figures?

Every configuration has a full specification: rates, simultaneous contacts, satellites per day, downlink, power and reach. We share it with early-access partners, together with access to the 3D station viewer.

Request the figures