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This is quite the career trajectory for a former Mouse House darling: Bridgit Mendler, whose vast Disney Channel credits included Good Luck Charlie and Wizards of Waverly Place, is launching a startup that she describes as a “data highway between Earth and space.”
As CEO of the El Segundo-based startup Northwood Space, Mendler says the new company is looking to mass produce ground stations, or teleports, that connect to satellites in space.
“Space is getting easier along so many different dimensions but still the actual exercise of sending data to and from space is difficult,” Mendler told CNBC. “You have difficulty finding an access point for contacting your satellite.”
After studying at MIT and Harvard Law, Mendler said the idea for the company came when she was spending time with family in New Hampshire during the pandemic. Northwood is the name of a local lake.
“While everybody else was making their sourdough starters, we were building antennas out of random crap we could find at Home Depot … and receiving data from [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] satellites,” Mendler said. “For me, why the ground-side matters is because it actually is about bringing the impacts of space home to people.”
Northwood, which Mendler is building with two former engineers from Lockheed Martin, has already received about $6 million in initial funding. The hope is to connect to a spacecraft in orbit later this year.
Mendler, who’s also a trained singer, played Teddy Duncan on Good Luck Charlie and was the lead in the Disney Channel original movie Lemonade Mouth. Her debut album, “Hello, My Name Is…”, was released in 2012.
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