OTTAWA – Telesat has named Erwin Hudson as vice-president of its global low earth orbit program Telesat LEO.
Hudson was CTO of WildBlue, an early satellite broadband provider later acquired by ViaSat, that began building its U.S. subscriber base using Ka-band spot beam capacity on Telesat’s Anik F2 satellite. Prior to WildBlue, he held senior roles at Space Systems Loral and was director satellite communications at TRW Space & Electronics. He holds a number of patents and his innovations, technical and commercial, have driven the growth of satellite broadband in markets around the world, says the announcement.
Based at Telesat’s headquarters in Ottawa, Hudson will direct the development and implementation of the company’s planned advanced, high throughput, low latency, global LEO constellation. Telesat announced last April that it had procured two prototype Ka-band satellites for operation in low earth orbit that are expected to launch later this year.
“Erwin is a tremendous addition to the Telesat team and I’m delighted to have someone with such vast technical and commercial experience in the design, implementation and operation of satellite-enabled broadband networks leading Telesat’s game-changing LEO initiative,” said president and CEO Dan Goldberg, in the announcement. “Telesat has a long and successful track record of bringing the most advanced and innovative communications services to the market and our cutting edge LEO program springs from that same pioneering spirit. The Telesat LEO constellation is precisely the network architecture satellite users are demanding and I have every confidence that Erwin will contribute significantly to its success.”
