Clock-watchers

Alicia Robinson

If you want to know what time it is at the North Pole or in Perth,

Australia, walk into the operations control room at Universal Space

Network in Newport Beach.

One wall of the control room is adorned with eight clocks. Each

shows the local time at one of the eight tracking stations the

Newport Beach-based company uses to pull down and distribute data

from satellites all around the world.

Just five years ago, Universal Space Network was a start-up

founded by former astronaut Pete Conrad, who died in 1999. Today, it

manages multimillion-dollar contracts to provide satellite tracking

and data services for NASA, the U.S. Defense Department and private

companies, and it was recently named Orange County’s

fifth-fastest-growing technology company in a survey by professional

services firm Deloitte & Touche.

Conrad believed the satellite industry would become more like the

commercial airline industry, said Thomas Ingersoll, Universal Space

Network’s chief executive. Satellites have to be flown like aircraft

but by people on the ground who need to track them. Companies also

need a way to get data to and from their satellites.

Universal Space Network figured out how to automate the tracking

and data collection, then it built antennas or leased time on

existing ones to create a network of stations on the ground. In a

way, the company resembles a cellular phone tower that provides the

infrastructure for a number of companies so each one doesn’t have to

build its own tower.

“Mr. Conrad used to say we are kind of like the AT&T; for space,”

Ingersoll said.

So much is done by computers that it takes only one person to

manage the control room’s eight computers and keep an eye on the

flat-screen monitor showing satellite paths overlaid on a map of the

world.

That leaves Ingersoll and some of the others at his 50-person

company to work on developing the market for their services. The

market is only expected to grow as governments around the world

realize it’s expensive to build their own infrastructure, said

Claes-Goran Born, president of Swedish Space Corp., which partners

with Universal Space Network for some services.

“We know that there is a trend that more and more will be

outsourced,” he said. “We wanted to have a partner doing similar

things in the United States.”

Universal Space Network has contracts for about 30 or 40

satellites -- many owned by the U.S. government -- among which are a

satellite mapping the origins of the universe and the transmitter for

Sirius satellite radio.

Only a handful of other companies offer similar services, so

Universal Space Network officials expect it to be a major player when

more commercial space applications are developed. People with big

money like Virgin Records founder Richard Branson are investing in

space, and someone is working on plans for a space hotel, said David

Wopschall, Universal Space Network’s chief financial officer.

“They’re going to need ways to communicate to the ground,”

Ingersoll said. “We have that common infrastructure everyone can

use.”