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The inconspicuous GroundCom company is not short-sighted, because its business plan looks all the way to space. FEEC graduate Peter Budáč has been interested in space research since he was a small boy, and after gaining vital experience in Switzerland, he now uses his knowledge in the Brno-based start-up, which last year also received support from the European Space Agency.

GroundCom is building a network of terrestrial communications stations that will keep up communication channels with small satellites – cubesats or microsats alike. Their popularity is booming. Thanks to their solution, the connection with the Earth could be extended from a few tens of minutes to several hours a day.

“Small satellites are clearly a growing trend. They are small and light and it is thus so much cheaper to get them into space. Thanks to this, even medium-sized companies or universities can try their technology directly in space, whether it concerns measuring radiation, pressure, temperature, telemetry, space imaging, verification of photovoltaic cells and much more. The variability of cubesats is beyond incredible,” says Peter Budáč, a graduate of microelectronics from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication Technologies, about the advantages of small satellites for research purposes. Together with his classmate Michal Mrkna, who studied communication technology, they now work for GroundCom.

“There are clients who, for example, have one of their own antennas, but these can provide a connection to the satellite for a maximum of fifty or sixty minutes a day. In order for the satellite not to be attracted by gravity, it must fly at tremendous speeds, orbiting the Earth as much as 12 to 16 times a day. Therefore, from a specific spot on our planet, such a satellite can only be captured for a short time. If we managed to build a worldwide network of ground stations, it would be possible to communicate with the satellite, for example, six hours a day. This means acquiring manyfold more data, and above all evaluating them more accurately,” Budáč explained. Currently, it is estimated that about a thousand small cubesats are orbiting our planet, but their number continues to grow.

“We want to finish building an antenna this year that will be located right here in the South Moravian Region. For the next year, our goal is to connect stations in India and Canada, which would allow us to cover three continents. The best cast scenario would be to have about seven stations around the world,” estimated Budáč, who is in charge of product quality and antenna development control at GroundCom. At first, he worked at the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Czech Academy of Sciences and he later moved to the Swiss company RUAG, which specialises in aerospace engineering.

The fact that the start-up is part of the ESA space incubator is proof to him that GroundCom has true potential. “Space research certainly has a great future. It is clear that resources will one day run out and we need to start tackling the issue of moving forward. This can already be seen in current research, whether it is the potential mining of raw materials on asteroids, building a new space station in the Moon’s orbit, and much more. This market is clearly growing, and it is growing exponentially,” commented Budáč, who has been interested in space ever since he was a small boy, enthusiastically leafing through the Slovak space-focused magazine Kozmos.

Although the ESA incubator provided the team with mentoring and premises at JIC, the company has adapted to the times and does its research remotely. “One member of the team is based in Great Britain, another in Germany, and there also two in Bratislava. So we meet once in a while, but we deal with most things online. We have customers from the Czech Republic, but we are also negotiating with interested parties from Italy and the United Kingdom. The big challenge will be the American market, where similar services already exist, but they are significantly more expensive,” said the FEEC BUT graduate.

Their job is to communicate with the Moon mission. “As the cubesats are now orbiting the Earth, they will surely orbit the Moon one day. And that is another place where we see great potential,” concludes Peter Budáč with a smile.