With the advancement of Internet applications, the global demand for broadband satellite communication services is incessantly escalating. Furthermore, there exists an exponential surge in the requisition for the capacity of satellite communication systems. In response to this evolving demand, the domain of satellite communication technology is progressively evolving toward the realm of high-throughput satellite (HTS) communication systems. The typical technical characteristics of HTS are: (a) the satellite adopts multibeam technology for beam overlapping coverage of the service area, which improves the quality of the wireless link while realizing the spatial dimension segmentation; (b) based on this, the system adopts multiple frequency multiplexing to improve the communication capacity of a single satellite; (c) gateway stations are tightly coupled with user beam clusters to complete two-hop communication, which makes multiple gateway stations share the communication resources of the same satellite, forming a spatial isolation of the gateway stations, and once again realizing the frequency multiplexing of the gateway station links. A key requirement for future multibeam broadband satellite communication systems is the ability to flexibly adjust beam capacity according to changes in business distribution, in order to meet time-varying business requirements. Beam hopping technology provides an efficient solution to achieve the efficient use of frequency resources and power resources. At the same time, the use of beam hopping makes the beam hopping of satellite payload need to match the business signals of ground signal stations, bringing about the need for synchronization of beam hopping between satellite and ground.

The SETI Institute announced the appointment of Dr. Christina (Chrissy) Richey as Director of Partnerships and Business Development, effective October 16, 2025. Richey joins the SETI Institute from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), holding the position of Program Manager for Research and Technology Development in the Office of R&D. With extensive experience in research management, strategic collaboration, and science leadership, Richey brings a deep understanding of how to advance scientific innovation through cross-sector partnerships.

"My career has always been focused on being a resource and leader for our fantastic research community, and I could think of no better place to do just that than the SETI Institute,” said Richey. “I look forward every day to helping us ask the biggest question of ‘Are we alone?’ with some of the best teams and best minds in the world.”