Hubble Networks became the first company in history to establish a direct Bluetooth connection to a satellite. This is a significant technology validation for the company, with the potential to connect millions more devices anywhere in the world.
The Seattle-based startup launched its first two satellites into orbit on SpaceX's Transporter 10 rideshare mission in March. The company has since confirmed that it is receiving signals from the onboard 3.5mm Bluetooth chip from over 600 kilometers away.
For space-enabled Bluetooth devices, the sky really is the limit. The company says its technology can be used in markets such as logistics, cattle tracking, smart collars for pets, GPS watches for children, automotive inventory, construction sites, and ground temperature monitoring. Haro said the low-hanging fruit is in industries that are desperate to get their networks covered at least once a day, such as remote asset monitoring in the oil and gas industry. As the constellation grows, Hubble will focus on sectors that require more frequent updates, such as soil monitoring, and use cases for continuous coverage, such as fall monitoring in the elderly.
Once up and running, customers simply need to integrate their device's chipset with firmware to connect to Hubble's network.
Hubble was founded in 2021 by Life360 co-founder Alex Haro, Iotera founder Ben Wilde (who sold the startup to Ring), and aerospace engineer John Kim. Haro said that when Wilde first presented the idea of ​​connecting Bluetooth chips to satellites, his first reaction was, “That's crazy.” And this seems crazy, especially since household appliances can have a hard time connecting to his other Bluetooth-enabled devices just a few feet away.
But the demand exists. The company says its existing IoT devices are power-hungry, have high operating costs and lack global connectivity. These are the fundamental limitations associated with today's Bluetooth-enabled devices that prevent many industries from leveraging IoT for their business.
The company joined Y Combinator's Winter 2022 cohort and closed a $20 million Series A last March. Hubble's first innovation was to develop software that allowed his off-the-shelf Bluetooth chips to communicate over very long distances with low power.
On the space front, the company also received a patent for a phased array antenna that can be launched on a small satellite. The antenna functions almost like a magnifying glass, allowing an off-the-shelf Bluetooth chip to communicate with the Hubble satellite. The team also had to solve Doppler-related problems, where frequency mismatches occur between fast-moving objects exchanging data via radio waves.
One of the Hubble satellites in a ground-based test chamber.
Hubble aims to launch SpaceX's third spacecraft this summer on SpaceX's Transporter 11 mission and its fourth spacecraft on Transporter 13. These four satellites make up what Haro calls a “beta constellation,” he said, and pilot customers are beginning to integrate it even today. The company plans to launch the following 32 satellites at once in the fourth quarter of 2025 or early 2026, but a launch provider has not yet been selected.
These 36 satellites will make up Hubble's first “production satellite constellation” and will allow users to connect to Hubble from anywhere in the world in approximately two to three hours per day.