EchoStar's Jupiter 3, intended to supplement the company's satellite-delivered broadband connectivity in the U.S. and Latin America, successfully launched Saturday, the company said. It said the geosynchronous orbit satellite will bring more than 500 Gbps of additional capacity to the Jupiter fleet and should enable download speeds of up to 100 Mbps in some markets.
A draft order about making spectrum available in the 2025-2110 MHz band on a secondary basis for space launches is circulating among FCC commissioners, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's office said Friday. “These rules will ensure commercial space launches have the necessary spectrum resources for reliable communications no matter their mission [and] promote economic strength, safety, competitiveness, and innovation," she said. The draft order also would expand the spectrum available for commercial space operations on a secondary basis in the 2200-2290 MHz band from four channels to the entire band, and amend the 399.9-400.05 MHz band allocation to allow deployment of federal satellites, her office said.
Commercial space operators need to consider the ethical and fiduciary issues of how having the DOD as a customer could make them targets in a space conflict, Even Rogers, CEO of space intelligence startup True Anomaly, said Wednesday on a Hudson Institute panel. The Russia-Ukraine war highlighted how commercial operators become targets when they support DOD, and they easily could be targeted before DOD or intelligence community space assets since it's unclear if the U.S. would defend commercial providers in space, he said. Redwire Executive Vice President-National Security Space Dean Bellamy said artificial stovepipes in space traffic management, like DOD vs. Commerce, are breaking down as the agencies are working better among themselves, with commercial operators and allies. He said that increased collaboration between Commerce and the Space Force resulted in better space traffic management and safety in space.
Broadband connectivity and mobile supplemental coverage from space should drive demand for satellite-delivered telecom services to be a $124.6 billion annual business by 2030, ABI Research said Wednesday. It said the satellite/mobile segment alone could have up to 200 million connections by 2031 with a market value of $18 billion.
New Viasat withdrew subsidiary Inmarsat's 2021 petition seeking U.S. market access for its planned V-band Orchestra constellation (see 2111030008), it said Tuesday in docket 22-153.
HawkEye 360, with its constellation licensed to operate from 500 km to 615 km, asked the FCC Space Bureau to amend that operational altitude to 400 km-615 km, extending its operation capabilities as their orbits decay. In an application Monday, the company said its Cluster 4 satellites are operating at an orbital altitude of about 477 km due to propulsion system failures and increased solar activity.
Activations of the Iridium-enabled Android emergency messaging service via Qualcomm's Snapdragon Satellite platform likely won't come until 2024, Iridium CEO Matt Desch said Tuesday as the company announced its Q2 earnings. The Iridium service has done its qualification work with Qualcomm, but there's integration work to be done by smartphone makers, he said. The Iridium service will start with emergency SOS service, then expand to real-time messaging, and the Apple/Globalstar service likely will do the same, he said. He said the company sees notable opportunities in L-band services such as connectivity services for small aircraft, helicopters and drones.
The FCC effectively gave first Ka-/Ku-band processing round applicants a seven-year sunset of their interference projections by backdating it to 2020 for first-round operators, OneWeb said Friday in a docket 21-456 petition for partial reconsideration. With many second processing round grants still pending, first-round operators would ultimately get little to no protection interference from second-round grantees after the latter are fully deployed, it said. That "undermines the Commission’s rationale that First Round operators should be ensured some period of time during which they will be protected from second-round systems even after the latter have deployed and offered service." OneWeb said, asking the agency to reconsider the sunset provision in its non-geostationary orbit satellite spectrum sharing order approved in April (see 2304200039).
Hyped for years, shipments of flat-panel satellite antennas are ratcheting up and manufacturers are moving from design and development to being production-ready, Valour Consultancy said Friday, forecasting a total of 100,000 units being shipped by year's end for connectivity applications like aviation, maritime and land mobility. It said non-geostationary orbit satellite capacity growth will drive antenna demand.
Geostationary orbit satellite startup Astranis' Arcturus satellite, launched in April to bring broadband to Alaska, "abruptly experienced an anomaly" with its solar array drive assembly, CEO John Gedmark tweeted Friday. As a result, it can't maintain full power constantly and the company will have to delay starting service in Alaska while repurposing the satellite for secondary missions, Gedmark said. The faulty component came from a contractor, and all Astranis-designed hardware "works perfectly," he said. Astranis knows "exactly how to quickly solve this issue on future spacecraft that are in production as we speak," he added. The Astranis problems, following technical problems with Viasat's ViaSat-3 Americas satellite (see 2307130003), are "tough blows for the industry," Northern Sky Research analyst Dallas Kasaboski tweeted Friday. "Thankfully, manufacturing is increasing in responsiveness, allowing replacements to be more easily deployed," he said. "Also acts as evidence supporting in-orbit servicing one day."