MBRYONICS has been expanding its partner and customer ecosystem and has recently been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for in-orbit demonstration activities in a team led by Kepler Communications. The €18.6M award is under Element 3 of the High-throughput Optical Network (HydRON) program, a project under ESA’s Optical and Quantum Communications – ScyLight program, within the agency’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES). MBRYONICS was chosen to be part of this mission following its successful contribution to HydRON Element 2, where the company delivered optical testbed facilities to provide system reliability.
In collaboration with Kepler Communications for Element 3, MBRYONICS optical terminal (StarCom), and its ground station test bed, have been selected to demonstrate full interoperability with other optical terminal providers during the in-orbit demonstrations and to also verify on-ground interoperability verification. The MBRYONICS StarCom Optical Terminal, alongside the on-ground verification infrastructure, creates a unified, end-to-end communication link critical for delivering high data rates, ESTOL compliance, and low latency to service complex satellite configurations.
“HydRON will serve as the world’s first multi-orbital optical communications network with a terabit per second capacity, offering resilient and efficient data transfer to address the challenges of bringing connectivity to multiple users securely, quickly and reliably,” said Laurent Jaffart, Director of Resilience, Navigation and Connectivity.
"The internet was built by making different networks talk to each other, and that’s exactly what we’re enabling in space," says John Mackey, CEO of MBRYONICS. "By combining our Optical Terminals with AI-optimized SDN platforms and OGS-1 ground stations, we are turning fragmented constellations into a single, seamless, and interoperable network. “Just as we demonstrated in DARPA Space BACN, this ESA award allows us to showcase how our laser communication technologies enable satellites from different providers to communicate seamlessly in orbit. We are delighted to partner with Kepler, and other ecosystem providers, on this strategic engagement with the European Space Agency.”
“We look forward to working with Mbryonics on this initiative. Interoperability is central to the success of HydRON, and bringing together multiple optical communication technologies on a shared platform is a critical step toward enabling operational, multi-vendor networks in space,” said Mina Mitry, CEO and Co-Founder of Kepler. To keep up with rapidly increasing demand for its optical communications platform, both in Europe and the U.S, MBRYONICS is building out its second manufacturing facility in Shannon, Ireland. The Facility, called Photon 2, is a 40,000 square feet facility and will be producing thousands of terminals by 2027.
MBRYONICS remains the only provider proven to handle all optical communication standards, allowing disparate constellations and terrestrial networks to operate as one seamless, high-capacity, integrated network. This expansion significantly ramps up MRYONICS production velocity, allowing it to rapidly proliferate its solutions to create a ‘network of networks’, reaching from Earth through LEO, MEO, GEO and cislunar space.
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