The nation that leads in space will lead the future. That starts not just with rockets and satellites, but also with secure communication, resilient navigation, strong national security, and the proper networks we’ll need to explore the solar system.
From spacecraft development, to launch, to ground control and more, the commercial space industry is growing fast to meet the challenges ahead. The growing number of manufacturers and contractors innovating and operating in space will encounter a range of networking and cybersecurity challenges, in an endeavor where millimeters and milliseconds separate success from catastrophe. Connecting it all demands flexible, high-performance and secure networking.
Not since the days of Apollo has the U.S. national attention been so focused on the skies. Commercial space companies are launching at a rapid pace and scaling just as quickly. From 2015–2024, investors poured $66 billion into space startups, according to space engineering and analytics firm BryceTech. Startups are innovating in spacecraft manufacturing, launch, ground equipment, satellite communications, geospatial analytics, human spaceflight, and more.
The international presence in space consists of two occupied spacecraft, ISS and Tiangong, with a total crew of 10 in orbit, plus about 14,200 satellites and a further 30,000 objects tracked by space surveillance networks. Following the success of Artemis II’s voyage to the moon and back, the U.S. and other nations will pursue manned exploration and colonization.
Satellites in orbit and development provide a range of services: global communications and relay, positioning, navigation and timing systems like GPS, surveillance and weather. Elon Musk has vowed to put data centers in orbit, overcoming huge technical challenges starting with power generation and downlink.
The fleet of active U.S. spacecraft in orbit range from GPS satellites launched in the late 1990s to the AST Bluebird 7 launched April 19 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, operating on a range of ground control, on-board computers, and comms systems.
The U.S. Space Force has declared space “the contested high ground of U.S. military power … the domain in which 21st century security, prosperity, and stability will be won or lost.” And the U.S.’s chief adversaries in space, Russia and China, are also developing civilian and offensive military space capabilities. Combatants in the space battlefield will contend with ground-based directed energy weapons capable of damaging overhead satellites, jammers that can disrupt GPS and communications satellites, direct-ascent and orbiting kinetic anti-satellite weapons, and cyberattacks on ground control systems.
Ground Control Gets Distributed
The growing fleet of commercial, civilian, and military spacecraft require significant ground control infrastructure to handle the range of satellite types and their respective communications systems. In addition to a range of RF channels, satellites need the support of a variety of ground stations: for launch and early warning; telemetry, tracking, and commanding; data downlink; and relay.
Like the spacecraft they support, ground control sites are owned and operated by civilian government, the military, and the growing number of commercial space companies. Venture-backed startups in the U.S. and allied nations are developing small phased-array and software-defined antenna systems for agile and resilient deployment, so-called Ground Station as a service (GSaaS), software-defined ground systems, and more.
In March 2026, the Space Force launched a $1.4 billion program intended to diversify its network of suppliers away from the small number of manufacturers or large custom parabolic dishes toward commercial companies developing smaller, mobile ground stations. All of these innovations will be integrated into the cloud and API-accessible.
The modems and signal processing equipment will handle encoding and decoding and TRANSEC and COMSEC. Manned terminals will include the range of consumer and enterprise devices common to any sensitive worksite — COTS, GOTS, and MOTS.
Commercial, military, and civilian space operations now rely on a growing mix of systems, devices, startups, contractors, and subcontractors. They need the highest post-quantum security, highest performance, and best flexibility for programmable, policy-driven network communications across multiple channels and bands. Companies can’t be locked exclusively into vendor networking devices. And because the stakes are so high, the network connecting those devices and systems must be capable of ultra-fast failover. With its large attack surface, ground control infrastructure is also a prime target for cyberattack, uplink jamming, positioning, navigation, and timing spoofing, even phishing.
ZeroTier Quantum is the first end-to-end quantum-secure networking platform. It builds decentralized networks linking up a virtually unlimited number of devices and cloud systems in any topology to enable launch, spacecraft and ground control.
With no appliance or control needed to handle every connection, networks running on ZeroTier’s platform grow organically, to build out satellite constellations and innovate at ground terminals. Administrators can authenticate devices and add them to networks without being physically present at the endpoint — a useful feature when the device is 36,000 kilometers away. That enables seamless integration and adaptation as standards evolve, maintaining resilience against future mathematical or side channel vulnerabilities. ZeroTier Quantum is also light enough to meet the most stringent SWAP-C requirements.
Built for Post-Quantum Space
The trove of downlink and technical data makes ground control a prime target of harvest now, decrypt later (HDNL) attacks. But ZeroTier Quantum is ready. As the only software-defined, end-to-end quantum-secure networking platform on the market, ZeroTier Quantum is designed for on-wire, data center level speed. ZeroTier’s quantum cryptographic construction meets NIST and NSA’s highest standards at CNSA 2.0 — exceeding PQC hurdles targeted by regulated industries and the government, including space agencies, from 2026 onward. It’s deployable across the full spectrum of space compute and data environments: cloud, on-prem, air-gapped, sovereign-gapped, and at the edge in earth’s orbit.
ZeroTier already helps military, civilian, and commercial space organizations connect distributed devices, systems, and cloud environments through software-defined networking. Built for high-performance, security, and operational flexibility, ZeroTier is ready to scale wherever the mission goes next — on earth or beyond.
Want to get ahead of quantum risk? Contact sales today.
Want a deeper breakdown of the terminology? Our complete networking and cybersecurity glossary has you covered.