Connecting the World with Byte-sized Satellites with Sara Spangelo, CEO SWARM

The Future Car: A Siemens Podcast

Close your eyes and imagine you’re holding a grilled cheese sandwich. Better yet, make one. Now, holding this crispy, gooey sandwich in your hands, would it surprise you to know that a device this small is capable of connecting the world?

When we picture a satellite orbiting the Earth, we tend to imagine huge, complex machines. But the next generation of satellite technology has arrived, and it’s quite literally the size of that sandwich in your hands.

These tiny satellites have great potential for the world at large. Their size and affordability mean they’re accessible to more people across the globe, and that they are able to reach where bigger, more robust satellites cannot. Forty-five of these satellites are already orbiting the planet, and the significance of that for farmers in remote regions, truck drivers on the road, water preservation, and the monitoring of the Earth’s magnetic field, is huge.

In this episode of the Women Driving the Future series, Ed Bernardon interviews Sara Spangelo, the Co-Founder and CEO of SWARM, a satellite company working to link the world through reliable, low-cost internet connectivity. Her expertise in small satellites and autonomous aircraft, paired with her background as a lead systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and Google X, has uniquely positioned her to become an industry leader in the pursuit of global connectivity.

Today, we’ll talk about how the concept of such tiny satellites came to be, the numerous benefits of their use from individuals to companies alike, and the impact they’ll have on the future of transportation and space travel.

Some Questions I Ask:

• When did you make the hard turn from mechanical engineering into space? (10:31)
• What was the hardest test you had to take to see if you were suited to be an astronaut? (12:44)
• When did you know you had to start SWARM? (15:03)
• What made you decide to shape your company around this goal of affordable connectivity? (18:19)
• What role is SWARM going to play in future transportation? (35:41)
• What do you envision for the future of transportation in space? (45:19)

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

• The modest size and impressive range of SWARM satellites (3:24)
• When Sara first caught the entrepreneurial bug (17:08)
• The SWARM satellite approach (20:15)
• The big impact of small data (24:38)
• How they utilize polar sun sync orbits (29:43)
• Why coverage in the South Atlantic Anomaly is challenging, and how SWARM does it (33:16)
• Life inside Antarctica’s McMurdo Station (40:09)
• The problems we’ll need to solve as we open up space travel (47:33)

Connect With Sara Spangelo:

• LinkedIn
• SWARM

Connect with Ed Bernardon:

• LinkedIn
• Future Car: Driving a Lifestyle Revolution
• Motorsports is speeding the way to safer urban mobility
• Siemens Digital Industries Software

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