Balerion Principal Aidan Daoussis sits down with Tom Barton, Co-Founder & CEO of Antaris, to discuss software-defined satellite systems. Antaris provides a software- and AI-based platform for designing, simulating, manufacturing, and operating satellite constellations. Its full-mission virtualization tools model spacecraft, ground infrastructure, software, and mission operations before deployment.

Timestamped Overview

00:00 – Introduction and overview of the Antaris platform01:14 – Barton’s background in open-source software, cloud infrastructure, and Planet Labs

04:02 – Founding Antaris to bring software abstraction and interoperability to space systems

05:01 – Platform capabilities spanning design, simulation, command and control, and flight software

07:03 – Limitations of legacy flight-software architectures and the SatOS approach

09:09 – Full-mission virtualization for government agencies and defense primes

13:08 – Reducing mission risk, development time, and human operational workload

15:13 – Edge AI, onboard processing, and software-defined satellite missions

17:14 – Multimodal Earth observation and delivering actionable intelligence

18:36 – Driving adoption without displacing incumbent spacecraft systems

20:29 – Sovereign space programs and localized satellite manufacturing

23:26 – How space software differs from conventional B2B SaaS

25:50 – Automated constellation operations and human oversight of exceptions

28:48 – Antaris’ defensibility through abstraction, synthetic telemetry, and specialized AI

31:18 – Customer demand in Japan and the value of end-to-end simulation

33:27 – Venture-capital dynamics and the shift from vertical integration toward interoperability

38:17 – Quantum key distribution, optical communications, and future satellite demand

44:03 – Common simulation surprises, including power, thermal, and ground-network constraints

46:44 – Marquee customer acquisition, future milestones, and Antaris’ multimodal ISR strategy

49:40 – Closing takeaway and conclusion

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