We all know that artificial intelligence is transforming every industry. One industry which is nascent today, but will be critical to us all in the future, and which could hardly exist without AI, is space telecoms – or Non-Terrestrial Networks, as participants prefer to call it. At a conference on NTNs in Riyadh last month, industry leaders discussed how to ensure its potential benefits are realised, including global connectivity, better understanding of our planet, and progress towards a multiplanetary future.
The Importance Of NTNs
One reason why NTNs are so important is that they will bring true connectivity to the whole planet. Delegates at the second “Connecting the World from the Skies” international forum in Riyadh last month, a conference co-hosted by the International Telecommunication Union and Saudi Arabia’s Communications, Space & Technology Commission, heard that in the last two years, the number of people with no reliable internet access fell from 2.7 billion to 2.6 billion. A hundred million more people connected is a very good thing, but clearly there is still a long way to go.
NTNs don’t just enable connectivity: they enable us to observe and understand the earth. Their cameras and sensors gather vast amounts of data which, when analysed, allows us to better understand how the climate works, and what steps we need to take to arrest and ameliorate global warming. They let us monitor and manage natural and man-made disasters like floods and fires. And they give us tools to optimize the use of natural resources and improve productivity in agriculture and other industries. For example, Ahmed Ali Alsohaili, a director of Sheba Microsystems, says that data from NTNs is indispensable to Aramco’s pipeline maintenance programme.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty forbids sovereign claims over extra-terrestrial territories, which makes the commercial exploitation of space a tricky business. But the extraction of resources is a grey area, and Xavier Lobao Pujolar, head of the future projects division at the European Space Agency says that with initiatives like the Artemis Accords, leaders are preparing for a future in which the supply of rare earths and other valuable materials can no longer be monopolized, or controlled by a handful of countries.
There is a lot of talk these days about how re-usable rockets will allow us to establish colonies on Mars. This is sometimes criticised as a waste of resources that could better be deployed taking care of people back here on earth. But the logic of making humanity multi-planetary is powerful. The Earth is vulnerable to man-made damage, and also to threats from outside, like asteroid impacts. We literally have all our eggs in one basket, and that is a risky position. For humanity to become multi-planetary, we need NTNs.
NTNs Need AI
NTNs require the co-ordination of expensive assets on a grand scale. Satellites and other high-altitude platforms must be navigated, adjusted, and co-ordinated. Their use of scarce resources like energy, bandwidth and spectra must be optimised, and they must be monitored for faults and accidents. All this has to be done factoring in the latency incurred by operating across hundreds and even thousands of miles.
As Mishaal Ashemimry, managing director of the Saudi Center for Space Futures says, the cadence of satellite launches has increased tremendously in recent years, and it is still increasing. There used to be a dozen launches a year, and now they happen every week or so. There will be more in the next three years than there were in the last ten. There is no way to manage, co-ordinate, and optimise this number of remote assets without AI. The number of civilian satellites in earth orbit today is less than 10,000, but it will soon be hundreds of thousands. Even an army of humans could not manage this amount of space traffic. Nor could it manage and analyse the tsunamis of data pouring back down to earth.
Goals Of The Saudi Conference On NTNs
The Riyadh conference last month had a number of goals. One was to ensure that access to NTNs is maintained for everyone, and does not become the preserve of a fortunate few. Spectrum must be shared between countries, and also between NTNs and terrestrial networks, which is a much larger industry. NTNs must be regulated fairly and efficiently, which is easier said than done. The conference was entirely focused on civilian NTNs, with military applications out of scope.
One of the obvious challenges facing NTNs is the jeopardy from space junk. If you have seen the film Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, you will be aware of the risk that two satellites colliding could spark a catastrophic chain reaction. Mishaal Ashemimry of the Center for Space Futures says that if we don’t address this risk soon, then a damaging collision is inevitable. Framing regulations that everyone can agree and also abide by is difficult, and worryingly, other delegates suggest that there may have to be a serious accident before concerted action is taken.
Where Eagles Dare
The variety of assets involved in NTNs is bewildering. Most of the satellites deployed are in Low-Earth Orbit, between 100 and 1,240 miles above us. They are cheaper to place in orbit than satellites located further out, and they suffer less from latency and from signal diffusion. But to be geostationary – to maintain a steady position over one spot on earth – satellites must be over 22,000 miles above it. Geostationary satellites don’t waste time traversing the 70% of the planet’s surface that is covered by water. And each GEO satellite can “see” a third of the planet.
A different kind of stable orbit is found still further out, at the five Lagrange points, two of which are a million miles away, and the other three much further. These orbits are stable relative to the Earth-Moon or Earth-Sun systems, and they are useful for various kinds of scientific observations and experiments. The ESA’s Xavier Lobao Pujolar says there is a race between the U.S. and China to place satellites at these locations.
Heading back closer to the ground, NTNs are also carried by High-Altitude Platform Systems, which are planes, balloons, and drones. For instance, Barry Matsumori, president and COO of Skydweller, describes how his company offers a low cost per unit of transmission because its aircraft – like a 747 but bigger – is relatively cheap to deploy and operate. It can also be geostationary, unlike LEO satellites.
A Multi-Polar World
The great majority of satellites in orbit today belong to U.S. companies. Starlink has around 7,000 in LEO, each circling the earth every 90 minutes, 340 miles above us. It has definite plans to deploy another 5,000, and may eventually launch as many as 30,000. Amazon’s project Kuiper only has two in orbit today, but plans to launch 3,200, of which half should be up by mid-2026. U.S. government agencies operate another 200 or so non-military satellites, including the 31 which provide the GPS system we all use in our digital maps.
It has escaped nobody’s attention that the U.S. has become a less predictable and less reliable partner – in NTNs as well as every other sphere. China has been building out its satellite constellation for years, but other countries are increasingly thinking about how to maintain access to NTNs. Eutelsat, a company owned mostly by European and Indian interests, operates around 700 satellites, and the EU plans to launch another 300 in the coming years under a programme called Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity, and Security by Satellite.
Saudi In Space
Saudi Arabia is keen to play a leading role in the development of this multi-polar world. Martijn Blanken is chief executive officer of Neo Space Group, an organisation established by the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund. He says that Saudi Arabia cannot leapfrog Starlink and Kuiper, but the Kingdom maintains good relationships with almost all countries around the world, and NSG wants to become a preferred supplier of NTN-related services.
The Kingdom has deployed 17 satellites since 2000, and under its ambitious Vision 2030 programme it plans to spend over $2.1 billion on space initiatives by the end of the decade.
It will partner with other countries to build satellite constellations, and to ensure that strong, effective regulators allow fair access to space telecoms for everyone.
