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Arthur Afonso has more than 25 years of experience in terrestrial and space communications networks. In his new position at E-Space, he’s taking the lead in the development of the advanced antennas for the company’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, which include mechanics and materials that are truly unique to E-Space.
“The technology we’re working on is highly proprietary — from design to materials to deployment,” Arthur says. “It will be quite revolutionary and different than other LEO satellite antennas done previously.”
It’s the kind of challenging project that appeals to an industry veteran like Arthur, and his background in satellite constellations at companies like OneWeb and Airbus have positioned him well to work on the end-to-end communications systems on the E-Space constellation. He says he’s eager to take that knowledge and apply it in new ways.
“I like working on something that makes you think outside the box and stands out against what the traditional players are doing,” he says. “We can do it differently; we can do it better. And we can do it faster — a lot faster.”
Compared to other companies where many components are purchased from other suppliers, E-Space is vertically integrated. That, Arthur says, is expected to yield highly beneficial results.
“For example, we’re designing our own chipsets, allowing us to modify the current state-of-the-art and explore opportunities to elevate the system,” he says. “We can adapt the technology to work with the whole system we are designing, which is quite phenomenal.”
Arthur calls himself a “global citizen” who’s had the opportunity to live in seven countries on three continents. He currently lives near the E-Space SAS office in Toulouse, France with his wife and children and stays busy restoring classic cars, playing music with his family, cooking, hiking and traveling. His wife is a certified dive master, and the couple have several hundred dives under their belts.
