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Satnews Daily
December 5th, 2017

Industry Vet Sanford Joins BridgeSat as New Vice President of Strategy and Business Development


Satellite, terrestrial and cybersecurity veteran Rick Sanford has joined BridgeSat as the firm's new Vice President of Strategy and Business Development.


Rick Sanford, BridgeSat's newly named Vice President of Strategy and Business Development.

Sanford’s 30-plus years of design and integration experience will help BridgeSat revolutionize global communications with an advanced optical communications network designed to serve the unique needs of LEO satellites. His expertise includes cryptographic, terrestrial carrier, satellite and timing systems, with experience in the APAC, EMEA and U.S. markets. He joins BridgeSat from Surrey Satellite Technology-US, LLC, where he was responsible for smallsat mission development in the government and commercial sectors.

Sanford’s career includes space systems consulting firm SpaceGroundAmalgam, LLC which he founded, the U.S. Air Force and Cisco, where he founded the company’s space business unit. Sanford served as a corporate and then individual member of the International Space University Board of Trustees from 2007-2017.

BridgeSat is developing a global optical communications ground network to serve the commercial satellite community. This network will consist of multiple optical ground stations strategically located in areas that have low clouds, with good access to terrestrial networks and optimized to serve LEO, ISS and GEO orbits.

Sanford said that laser communication to and from space has been a goal for close to two decades. BridgeSat is the first U.S. company to focus on bringing the advances in current generation optical technology to the forefront of space-based communications terminals designed for smallsat form factors and power constraints.

Barry Matsumori, BridgeSat's CEO, noted that when it comes to developing and executing secure, next-generation satellite communications systems for mission-critical applications, Rick has been there and done that — that experience, along with his reputation and global relationships, will be invaluable for BridgeSat, the company's partners and customers.