HISTORY
Universal Space Network, Inc. (USN) was founded in 1996, with the goal of providing services that would make space more accessible. Former NASA astronaut Pete Conrad had participated in the growth of the space industry and realized that high-cost expenditures often grounded great ideas before they could take off. He created the USN concept of pay-as-you-go services and built the company around a crew of experts whose collective experience could help reduce costs while also mitigating the risks of space ventures.

In 1998, USN started building ground stations in Alaska and Hawaii in preparation for providing services to NASA. When funding was completed with Warburg Pincus and the Swedish Space Corporation in 1999, the USN network was expanded to include Western Australia and the sites of worldwide collaborative partners, and the company’s services were expanded.

Today, we’re focused on expanding our capabilities and services to meet the evolving demands of the aerospace industry. We have become a leader in the space communications and TT&C markets by demonstrating our ability to serve our customers’ needs in an innovative, cost-effective manner.

Working in partnership with key industry players and aerospace innovators, USN is discovering new and exciting ways in which the network can be applied to a variety of satellite applications. Research and development, military and defense, scientific discovery, commercial communications and Earth-monitoring missions have benefited from our services. We continue to expand our services by offering added capacity to the network through expansion of our own infrastructure, new partnerships with existing stations around the world and efforts to extend and leverage existing technology and system capacity.

Our customers speak volumes about our work. Trace our history through the missions and ventures we’ve served.