20 April 2011

SSC, announced the expansion of PrioraNet, its worldwide satellite ground station network to three new locations, Miami Florida and Riverside California in the United States and Punta Arenas on the southern tip of Chile.

This network expansion involves the construction of satellite tracking antennas and related ground station equipment for a variety of space-based applications including remote sensing, synthetic aperture radar and telemetry, tracking and commanding operations.  All three stations are scheduled to begin operations by the 3rd quarter of 2012.

Related to this expansion, the company’s US-based subsidiary, Universal Space Network (USN) has signed a multi-year contract with the Norwegian company Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) for the reception of earth observation data from commercial imagery satellites.  This contract will utilize services from SSC’s three new ground stations for a period of up to 10 years beginning in mid 2012. 

Tom Ingersoll, USN’s President stated, “It is very exciting to announce the further expansion of SSC’s ground station network to include these three new locations.  This will greatly enhance our ability to service our growing satellite services customer base in the US and abroad”. 

The contract will be managed by USN in the United States and it will also include the provision of services from two other SSC operating regions, SSC Chile for Punta Arenas and SSC in Stockholm for global terrestrial communications. Marcelo Berner, Managing Director at SSC Chile, emphasized that “SSC Chile will now have three key locations in Chile, Santiago, Easter Island and Punta Arenas, that allows us to serve a wide variety of customers.“

“This opportunity only begins to demonstrate the breadth and depth of our organization including our ability to construct and operate satellite terminals on multiple continents and provide broadband terrestrial communications,” said SSC President and CEO Lars Persson.  Persson added, “As a global leader in the space community, SSC is happy to invest in new infrastructure to help others make better use of space. .”