Don Brown is the General Manager and Senior Management Official of Telesat U.S. Services, LLC. In this role, he is responsible for global government business for the state-of-the-art Telesat LEO constellation currently in development. Each spacecraft in the Telesat LEO fleet will include four (4) Optical Inter-Satellite Links (OISLs): one of the first commercial networks to deploy OISLs at scale.
Mr. Brown has spent 25 years developing commercial space opportunities for national security and civil government missions. At Telesat, his team is responsible for Telesat’s contract with DARPA on the ground-breaking “Blackjack” satellite program, and for Telesat’s contracts on the Air Force Research Labs “DEUCSI” (Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Satellite Internet”), U.S. Space Force “CASINO” (Commercially Augmented Space Inter Networked Operations) development programs, and NASA NextSTEP-2 Study Program, among others.
Prior to Telesat, Mr. Brown was Vice President of Hosted Payloads for Intelsat General Corporation, where he was responsible for government communications, navigation, sensor and scientific systems aboard Intelsat spacecraft. Successes of Mr. Brown and his team included the Cisco “IP Router in Space” (“IRIS”) payload on Intelsat IS- 14, launched in November 2009, and the Australian Defence Force (ADF) UHF payload, launched on Intelsat IS-22 in 2012. The ADF Hosted Payload was named by “Via Satellite” magazine as one of the “30 Events that Shaped the Last 30 Years in Satellite.”
Prior to the merger of Intelsat and PanAmSat in 2006, Mr. Brown was Vice President of DoD Systems at PanAmSat’s G2 Satellite Solutions, a major provider of commercial satellite capacity for UAVs. Mr. Brown has held senior positions with Quincy Jones’ QRadio, American Mobile Satellite Corp., and in the Satellite Systems Division of Federal Express Corporation. He was also the co-founder of USA TODAY Sky Radio, the first provider of live broadcast satellite services to the airlines.
Mr. Brown currently serves on the Space Enterprise Advisory Group (SPEAG) to U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Brown has also served on the Satellite Task Force of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee to the President of the United States and as Co-Chair of the Government Services Working Group of the Satellite Industry Association. He is a graduate of Princeton University and is a frequent speaker on commercial satellite operations and national security.