Former Disney star Bridgit Mendler talks scaling connectivity and resilience for space

Former Disney Channel star and singer Bridgit Mendler took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday to detail how her startup, Northwood Space, is investing in a forgotten part of the space industry: ground infrastructure.

Ground stations are the critical communication points for satellites to communicate with Earth. Northwood aims to mass produce ground stations, as the number and capacity of ground stations are a pressing bottleneck in the space industry.

“To actually fulfill the benefit of people in the world, you have to invest in unsexy problems, like building a ground network,” Mendler said. “I personally think that’s pretty sexy and fun. It’s absolutely not what most people think of when they think of the space industry. I think they think of rockets, they think of satellites, but they don’t think about ground infrastructure.”

Mendler said she spoke to many space startup founders who brought up this idea as an issue for them after their first missions, and that they were wondering when a ground station startup would be founded.

The idea behind Northwood Space is creating a data highway between space to accelerate mass adoption of satellite technology. While Space companies need connectivity to run their business, ground infrastructure essentially is stuck in the past, which is why Northwood is working to rapidly scale connectivity for space.

“I think there’s been technology shifts that have been kind of difficult to bring to life until very recently,” Mendler said. “So for us, that was something we were kind of tracking with Northwood. There’s this solution that we know we want to build towards, you know, exponential growth needs exponential tech. We need some kind of exponential tech on the ground side to be able to accommodate the growth in the space industry.”

Northwood is aiming to help companies hit the performance levels that support the majority of space missions, and have it at a price point where they can proliferate a network.

Mendler noted that the startup is looking to support reduced collisions and allow for better awareness for spacecraft through increased connectivity. The startup is also forced on working to help satellite operators anticipate failures in advance.

Before adding space startup CEO to her résumé, Mendler was largely known for her hit show “Good Luck Charlie” and her music career. After leaving acting, Mendler studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Law School.

Despite her many different jobs, Mendler said she has always loved space and felt that she was meant to do something different.

“As a teenager, the thing that felt the most impactful and meaningful was to go beyond TV,” Medler said. “It was an amazing experience, but there was that nagging thing in the back of my mind about contemplating maybe my impact was also elsewhere. I was actually filming a movie in Massachusetts, and it was nearby to the MIT Media Lab, and I went to visit and I was just struck by all these projects really focused on technology and humanity and meaningful progress for the world.”

Mendler then decided to pursue her master’s degree and ended up falling in love with the space sector.

Northwood hit the ground running earlier this year with around $6 million in funding from several investors, including Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Also Capital.