disney

A former Disney Channel star just raised $100M+ and won a $49.8M U.S. Space Force contract to build satellite infrastructure that could reshape the space economy.

Her name: Bridgit Mendler.

Most people remember her as Teddy Duncan from Good Luck Charlie — music career, tours, mainstream fame in the early 2010s.
Then she stepped away from Hollywood completely.

What followed is publicly documented:

• Master’s degree from MIT
• Enrollment in a PhD program
• Harvard Law School graduate
• Role at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) working on satellite and communications policy
• Publicly stated interest in space law and orbital regulation

During COVID, that academic path turned practical.

Mendler and her husband Griffin Cleverly (a Lockheed Martin aerospace engineer) began experimenting with DIY ground antennas to communicate with NOAA weather satellites — a real, documented entry point into satellite communications.

That led to the founding of Northwood Space in 2023 (El Segundo, CA), alongside software lead Shaurya Luthra.

The problem they’re solving is structural: Thousands of satellites are launching into orbit — but ground stations (the infrastructure that connects satellites to Earth) are:

• Expensive
• Slow to deploy
• Fragmented
• Closed networks controlled by a few large players

SpaceX solved this for itself with Starlink by building a private, closed ground-station ecosystem.

Northwood’s model is different: An open, shared ground-station network that any satellite operator can plug into — turning deployment cycles from years into days.

This vision attracted serious backing:

• Andreessen Horowitz
• Founders Fund
(early SpaceX backers, now backing Northwood)

Milestones by early 2026:

• ~$100M Series B funding
• $49.8M U.S. Space Force contract
• Team members from SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Palantir
• Positioning as shared infrastructure for the non-SpaceX space economy

What makes this story different isn’t celebrity — it’s credibility:

No shortcuts.
No brand leverage.
No hype-first strategy.

Just a decade of deep training in:

Law.
Policy.
Engineering.
Systems.
Space infrastructure.

This isn’t a pivot story.
It’s a long-horizon reinvention story.

And it shows where the space economy is going: Not just rockets and satellites — but infrastructure layers, platforms, and shared networks that make the entire ecosystem scalable.

The future of space isn’t just in orbit.
It’s in the systems that connect orbit to Earth.
#Disney #Space

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