Celestia’s satellite communications ecosystem on show at Satellite 2026

Celestia is presenting a raft of advanced ground segment technologies at this year’s Satellite conference and exhibition in Washington DC, underpinning its position as a leading space tech partner delivering innovative telecom solutions globally.

Celestia’s cutting-edge, compact electronic multibeam gateways and Ka-band phased array antennas set a new standard for multi-orbit constellations, satcoms, EO, TT&C and user terminals.

The groundbreaking gateway solution, proven in extensive testing over the last two years, represents a transformative phase for the global satellite industry, one where virtually unlimited constellation bandwidth and faster time to revenue from gateway deployment become a reality, driven by Celestia’s innovation. The solution is compact, flexible and scalable, offering high reliability and operational efficiency for next generation satellite communications capable of tracking and communicating with up to 28 satellites simultaneously. 

A breakthrough in low noise performance for ground and space communications, Celestia’s new Compact Cryogenic Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), will be presented at the show.

The Compact Cryo LNA uses a robust, highly compact design featuring an integrated cryo cooler to achieve seamless, ultra-low noise amplification in a wide range of applications from lunar communications and earth observation to radio astronomy and science missions.  The Compact is fully self-contained, avoiding the need for an additional compressor, gas lines or water chiller, with no liquids to top off and far fewer working parts than other cryogenic systems on the market. 

This means it can offer up to 10 years of maintenance-free operation with low energy consumption suitable for any antenna starting at 7-metres in diameter. It also runs in any orientation on single or dual channel on multiple frequency bands from S to KA32 and can be mounted in redundant configurations.

Signal improvement from the Compact means operators can reduce their antenna size by 20% or more and benefit from lower CAPEX and easier deployment.  By increasing sensitivity, link margin can be improved or the antenna system can be down-sized, resulting in a corresponding decrease in costs.  For a 10-metre earth observation antenna, that could mean a cost saving of around 150K€ in materials for the dish, structure and pointing system.

The Virtual Integrated Baseband (V-IBB) is an advanced solution for satellite tracking, telemetry and command.  It provides satellite ground station operators, satellite manufacturers and integrators with a rapid, reliable and effective means of communication between the satellite control centre and - via the station RF section - the satellite.

Simple to deploy and adaptable in use, the V-IBB is a virtual baseband modem which receives satellite telemetry and transmits satellite telecommands. It can also test satellite TT&C in the RF chain, before the satellite goes into orbit. It features an inbuilt digitiser, which means operators no longer need to have an S-band up and downconverter; the modem automatically transfers the analogue signal directly to the digital domain and the data is sampled. The data can then be saved in the ground station or in the cloud. 

Two S-band antennas can be connected to one V-IBB modem, requiring lower investment in a multiple antenna environment, and several samplers can be connected to one SDR server.   The V-IBB operates at high speed – up to 20Mbps – and has an extremely short acquisition time, even in challenging receiving conditions like low signal / noise or Doppler.

Its modular software architecture and intuitive graphical user interface provide easy (re)configuration and there is a real-time built-in spectrum analyser. Fewer hardware elements and modulation / demodulation being software based provide high levels of operational reliability.

Offering a superior lifetime thanks to its use of the latest GaN technology, Celestia’s range of high performance SSPAs/BUCs has been specifically designed for lunar communications, representing an exceptionally effective, reliable and cost-effective solution.  The range offers outstanding performance in outdoor or indoor operations for civil applications, with hundreds already deployed in very demanding settings.

With the onset of optical communications, Celestia is developing a new range of products for both Optical Terminal testing and for use in Optical Ground Stations (OGS). These include an Optical Modem, a key element for optical satellite communication, which can be integrated into optical ground stations or used in test environments. The optical modem is multi-standard compatible and is designed to operate with data rates up to 10Gbps. Optional add-ons include an Optical Front End that can contain an Optical Receiver or multiple tunable laser seeds with programmable skew and wavelengths.