Sternula A/S

Company's own description on virk.dk

Corporate Background Sternula was registered as a company in July 2019 to build a business around maritime digital services, under the International Maritime Organization (IMO) known as “e-navigation”. Based in Denmark, a strong maritime nation with one of the world’s largest merchant fleets and huge territorial waters in a Commonwealth with the Faroe Islands and Greenland, the company taps into a growing eco system of maritime industry needs, solutions, and technology. The vision was to combine the new VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) technology and maturing “New Space” technology to build a global VDES satellite network, extending shore-based VDES networks into the oceans. We launched the STERNULA-1 satellite in early 2023, only 3 years and 6 months after start-up – a European record. The satellite was used for demonstrating VDES use cases until decommissioned at the end of 2024. The global adoption and roll-out of VDES has taken time. The company has developed into a world-leading technology and solutions provider for VDES networks and VDES-based services. In particular, we built the world’s first end-to-end solution for broadcasting navigational warnings over a shore-based VDES network, currently serving Danish waters in a pilot project from 4 coast stations. In this work, we are using VDES together with supplementary technologies in what we informally refer to as “AIS 2.0”, because VDES is formally an extension of the AIS ship tracking system. Principle Activities of the Company Sternula develops and markets solutions for maritime digitalization of the ship bridge, in particular use cases described in the IMO e-Navigation Strategy Implementation Plan. Despite that global satellite networks have been established for global internet connectivity, the ship bridge is still largely unconnected. This is because of very high security standards for the ship bridge (similar to the cockpit of an airplane) and the general recommendation by maritime organizations to keep the ship bridge equipment isolated from open internet. VDES allows for connectivity between the ship bridge and digital service providers on land (often maritime authorities) without opening for internet. Supplementary technologies also ensure that the data exchanged is digitally signed, such that the sender is always authenticated and verified. Sternula offers its expertise and technology for building VDES networks. We are world-leading in the end-to-end VDES network, from the digital service on land, over secure and robust data routing and the coastal/satellite VDES network, onto the ship bridge using standardized interfaces. We provide: 1. Turnkey AIS 2.0 network solutions (coastal and/or satellite-based), including the setup of selected digital services. 2. VDES routing network components (software and hardware) based on the Maritime Messaging Service (MMS) standard. 3. Ship VDES interface solutions for integrating with other ship bridge systems based on the Maritime Messaging Service (MMS) and SECOM standards.