Hubble Network became the first company in history to create a direct-to-satellite Bluetooth connection — a critical technology validation for the company, potentially opening the door to connecting millions more devices anywhere in the world.
The Seattle-based startup launched its first two satellites into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-10 launch vehicle mission in March. Since then, the company has confirmed that it has received signals from the built-in 3.5mm Bluetooth chips from over 600 kilometers away.
The sky really is the limit for space-enabled Bluetooth devices: the startup says its technology can be used in markets such as logistics, cattle tracking, smart pet collars, GPS watches for kids, car inventory, construction sites and soil temperature monitoring . Haro said the low-hanging fruit are those industries that are desperate for even once-a-day network coverage, such as remote asset monitoring for the oil and gas industry. As the constellation scales up, Hubble will turn its attention to areas that may need more frequent updates, such as ground monitoring, to continuous coverage use cases, such as fall monitoring for the elderly.
Once up and running, a customer will simply need to integrate their devices’ chipsets with a piece of firmware to enable connection to Hubble’s network.
Hubble was founded in 2021 by Life360 co-founder Alex Haro, Iotera founder Ben Wild (who sold his startup to Ring), and aerospace engineer John Kim. Haro said that when Wild first presented the idea of attaching a Bluetooth chip to a satellite, his initial reaction was, “There’s no weird way.” And it sounds crazy, especially as consumer electronics struggle to connect to other Bluetooth-enabled devices that are just a few feet away.
But the demand is there: existing IoT devices need power, are expensive to run and lack global connectivity, the company says. These are fundamental limitations associated with Bluetooth-enabled devices today and prevent many industries from leveraging IoT for their businesses.
The company joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 cohort and closed a $20 million round last March. Hubble’s first innovation was the development of software that allows off-the-shelf Bluetooth chips to communicate over very long distances at low power.
On the space side, the company also patented a phased array antenna that can be launched on a small satellite. The antennae act almost like a magnifying glass and are what allow an off-the-shelf Bluetooth chip to communicate with the Hubble satellite. The team also had to solve problems related to Doppler, as frequency mismatches occur between fast-moving objects exchanging data via radio waves.
One of the Hubble satellites in a ground test chamber.
Hubble aims to launch a third satellite on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 mission this summer and a fourth on Transporter-13. Those four satellites will make up what Haro called a “beta constellation,” and pilot customers are starting to activate their integrations even today, he said. The startup plans to launch the following 32 satellites simultaneously in the fourth quarter of 2025 or early 2026, although the launch provider has not yet been selected.
These 36 satellites will make up Hubble’s first “production constellation” and will allow connection to a Hubble satellite approximately 2-3 hours a day from anywhere in the world.
