About — ip.space Foundation

Mission

The orbital internet is being built right now. Satellite constellations are multiplying, orbital datacenters are emerging, and the next frontier of the internet is taking shape in low Earth orbit and beyond. But unlike the terrestrial internet, which was built on open standards, neutral governance, and shared routing infrastructure, the orbital internet is at risk of becoming a collection of proprietary, fragmented walled gardens.

ip.space proposes extending the Internet Protocol to orbital infrastructure through open peering standards, a community-governed registry, and a neutral routing fabric that any operator can participate in regardless of their satellite platform, ground station provider, or commercial interests.

What we do

Open Routing Standards

Purpose-built protocols for the orbital environment, including the Orbital Routing Protocol (ORP) specification targeting IETF Internet Draft submission.

Community-Governed Registry

Orbital ASN and IPv6 address allocation through a neutral registry, modeled on the institutions that govern terrestrial internet resources.

Neutral Peering Fabric

Open interconnection standards connecting orbital operators without proprietary lock-in, including a peering marketplace for trading traffic capacity.

Open Source Edge Router (IER)

The ip.space Edge Router software stack that ground station partners deploy to bridge orbital and terrestrial networks. Published under a permissive license.

Partner Directory

A certified ecosystem of hardware manufacturers, transit providers, ground station operators, system integrators, and research institutions.

Working Groups

Three initial working groups — ORP, IER, and Policy — open to community participation. All outputs published openly and contributed to IETF and open source communities.

Emergency Operations (ORP-DISTRESS)

A protocol-level distress beacon for satellites experiencing loss-of-contact or anomaly conditions. Any ip.space-certified satellite that receives an ORP-DISTRESS beacon relays it regardless of peering relationship — creating an orbital cooperative search-and-rescue fabric analogous to international maritime distress conventions.

What ip.space is not

Not a satellite operator. We will not launch or operate satellites.

Not a commercial carrier. We will not sell internet connectivity to end users.

Not a government body. We have no regulatory authority.

Not a vendor. We have no product to sell. ip.space is infrastructure governance.

Our Stage

ip.space Foundation, Inc. was incorporated in Texas in 2025 and is currently applying for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. We are pre-operational. We have no deployed infrastructure, no issued ASNs, and no active ground station partnerships today.

What we have is a framework, a founding vision, and the domain ip.space. We are publishing our whitepaper to recruit the founding community that will build ip.space into something real.

Founders

Zackary Pedersen

President & Founder

President and CEO of Snaju Inc., a Texas-based technology company operating DartNode, a commercial internet service provider with autonomous system AS399646. Extensive experience in BGP network operations, IPv6 deployment, and internet infrastructure, as well as aerospace and defense software development with flight heritage including lunar surface and International Space Station operations.

Don Pedersen

Co-Founder & Board Member

Don has built his career in and around NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where he has been an integral part of the software and systems supporting human space flight. His work has spanned both sides of the mission boundary, from ground support infrastructure to on-orbit data handling, across decades of human spaceflight programs. He brings to ip.space firsthand knowledge of what it takes to build software that a program depends on, and what that engineering standard should mean for infrastructure operating in orbit.

Melissa Pedersen

Board Member