Disney Channel Star Creates Space Satellite Startup
Who said movie and television stars are space explorers on screen only? True, William Shatner has been to space, but the true exploration isn’t limited to space flight alone. It’s often done from the safety of our pale blue dot, using satellites and other communication equipment. To that note, a Disney Channel star, Bridgit Mendler, has launched a space satellite data startup.
The amount of data traveling from and to satellites has grown to colossal levels.
Singer, songwriter, actress, and MIT and Harvard graduate Bridgit Mendler, whose cinematography includes titles like Good Luck Charlie, Wizards of Waverly Place, and Clique, announced the launch of her new satellite data startup, Northwood Space. The aim of this new startup is to make satellite technology more accessible by mass-producing data-retrieving ground stations on Earth rather than building rockets or actual satellites. Ground stations, also known as teleports, are those large and often circular antennas that connect to satellites in space.
For reference, one of the best-known ground stations is the Very Large Array (VLA), which consists of 27 massive dish antennas on the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico—it’s often depicted in space-themed movies. As it turns out, Northwood will be manufacturing those and similar other antennae for satellite communications.
The company, with Bridgit Mendler at the forefront, has already attracted high-profile venture investors, with $6 million in initial funds granted by Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Also Capital.
Bridgit Mendler, whose cinematography includes titles like Good Luck Charlie, Wizards of Waverly Place, and Clique, announced the launch of her new satellite data startup, Northwood Space.
It’s important to note that Bridgit Mendler isn’t building Northwood alone. The company has two additional co-founders: Griffin Cleverly, Mendler’s husband and Northwood’s Chief Technology Officer, and Shaurya Luthra, who is the Head of Software. Both individuals have spent time as engineers at Lockheed Martin—an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation.
With the space industry growing at an unprecedented rate, with private investors and companies now turning their gaze towards the stars, the amount of data traveling from and to satellites has grown to colossal levels. Bridgit Mendler’s Northwood is trying to address that issue, with the company’s CTO stating that Northwood aims to build ground stations that can get the data reliably and in quantities needed by the growing space industry.
These solutions make data transmission more streamlined for space companies, allowing them to be much more responsive to use cases and space missions that pop up.
Many of these solutions are conceptualized with fast production and deployment flexibility in mind, with Northwood being able to deliver ground stations within days, not months. This would save satellite operators plenty of time they would otherwise spend on reconfiguring their networks.
Additionally, it would make data transmission more streamlined for space companies, allowing them to be much more responsive to use cases and space missions that pop up. As for Bridgit Mendler, well, we can now all expect the unexpected as she ventures into entrepreneurism.
Bridgit Mendler first became known as a child actress, with her early credits including 2007’s Alice Upside Down, 2008’s Clique, and 2009’s Labor Pains. In 2012, she signed with Disney Channel and played Juliet van Heusen on Wizards of Waverly Place, as well as some of the networks’ other releases. She started focusing on her education in the late 2010s and earned both her degrees, one from MIT and the other from Harvard, in 2024, after which she became the CEO and co-founder of Northwood Space.
Source: CNBC
