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Program 04 · WIRES

WIRES

Wireless Infrastructure for Remote Exploration Systems

Communications, Navigation & Timing

Everything operating beyond Earth needs to know where it is, what time it is, and how to get data home, and the systems that answer those questions today were built for orbits close to Earth and a benign signal environment. WIRES is the layer for everything else, and EVERLIGHT is its product: the Constanellis communications, navigation, and timing network, LEO to the lunar surface, delivered as a service.

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Constanellis builds five programs from the ground outward: FORGE and NEXUS on the ground, HERMES and WIRES in orbit, ATLAS on the lunar surface. WIRES is the orbit stage of that sequence.

The problem

GPS ends. Missions don't.

Contested environments degrade the signals defense systems assume, and beyond geostationary orbit those signals barely exist at all. Every mission that operates there today carries its own bespoke answer, built once, flown once. WIRES replaces the bespoke answer with shared infrastructure: resilient navigation, timing, and communications that a mission subscribes to instead of reinventing.

The demand is published from three directions at once. Positioning, navigation, and timing is the largest space-enabled market on Earth: 77 percent of a global downstream market ESA estimates at 489 billion euros for 2025. The Space Force's Objective Force 2040 writes commercial partners and allied constellations into its next-generation resilient-PNT architecture, and demands operations that continue through degraded and denied signal environments. And NASA's published lunar targets ask for better than 500 megabits per second of relay and for navigation and timing service at the south pole. One network answers all three. WIRES is built to operate it.

Resilient PNT

Position, navigation, and timing that does not fold when GPS is degraded or absent: alternative signals and onboard solutions for the regimes GPS was never built to serve.

Communications Relay

Persistent links between Earth, orbiting assets, and the lunar surface, including the far side and shadowed regions with no direct line of sight to Earth.

Ground Segment

Antennas, scheduling, and mission operations connecting customer spacecraft to the network and to their teams on the ground.

Service Delivery

Connectivity and navigation bought as recurring service per mission or by subscription, the way operators buy connectivity on Earth.

EVERLIGHT · Network architecture

EVERLIGHT: a network you plug into, not a program you rebuild.

Constanellis means constant light, named for the peaks of eternal light at the lunar south pole. EVERLIGHT is that standard made into a service: a link that does not drop, a signal that does not sleep, navigation that does not blink. The network is architected as a service from the first node: relay and navigation above, terminals at the edge, one operations floor behind it. A customer plugs into the network the way a phone finds the nearest tower, and the network grows node by node as the lunar economy does.

01
[ RELAY NODES ]

Relay & Navigation Nodes

Smallsat-class nodes in cislunar and lunar orbits carrying the relay links and the navigation signal. Deployment starts small and scales with demand. Coverage priority goes to the hard cases first: the south polar region and the far side, the places where a direct link to Earth does not exist.

02
[ USER SEGMENT ]

User Terminals

Modular terminals for orbiters, landers, rovers, and crewed systems, designed toward the emerging lunar interoperability standards so a customer can roam across compliant networks rather than marry one vendor. The terminal is the subscription card, not the product.

03
[ GROUND SEGMENT ]

Ground Segment

Earth-side apertures, scheduling, and network management connecting the space nodes to each customer's own mission operations. Customers keep their ops floor. We keep the network between them and their spacecraft up.

04
[ NET OPS ]

Network Operations

One operations floor running the network as a utility: continuous connection between Earth and the people and assets in lunar orbit and on the surface, and positioning that tells a surface team exactly where it is, what is around it, and how to get back.

ORBITS, DATA RATES, AND LINK BUDGETS ARE STATED UNDER NDA. ARCHITECTURE SHOWN IS THE DESIGN OF RECORD.

Our approach

A utility, engineered for the hard cases first.

The places worth operating are the hardest to reach by signal: jammed environments near Earth, the lunar far side, the permanently shadowed craters that hold the water ice. WIRES is designed against those cases, because a network that only works when conditions are friendly is not infrastructure.

Interfaces are published and built toward LunaNet interoperability and delay-tolerant networking standards, so government and commercial users roam across compliant networks rather than rebuild for one vendor.

EVERLIGHT Network Scope
Design target
SpanLEO through cislunar space to the lunar surface
PNTNavigation and timing without a dependency on continuous ground tracking
Hard casesGPS-degraded regimes, lunar far side, and permanently shadowed terrain
StandardsDesigned toward the public lunar interoperability specifications and CCSDS recommendations
DeliveryPer-mission contact or subscription coverage
Data rateUndisclosedDelivered as a link budget across range, aperture, and margin. Under NDA.
Timing stabilityUndisclosedQuoted with its averaging interval, which is the only way the figure means anything. Under NDA.
Coverage and availabilityUndisclosedFollows the constellation geometry. Discussed under NDA with operators sizing a mission against it.
Assumptions
  • The network is at the maturity the badge above states. Values are design targets for it.
  • Link and timing figures are functions of range, aperture, margin, and geometry. A single headline number fixes a value at conditions no customer actually flies, so they are delivered as budgets rather than as figures.
  • Standards rows state design direction toward public specifications published by their respective organizations.

Coverage, link budgets, and service terms available under NDA to qualified customers.

WIRES in the sequence

The layer everything else reports through.

Awareness, operations, and lunar logistics all depend on being reachable and knowing where they are. WIRES is co-designed with the programs that consume it, not bought from a vendor after the fact.

Need a deeper technical discussion?

Coverage, link budgets, and service terms are available under NDA to qualified government and industry partners.

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