It is always fun going back a few years and Pierre Lionnet, director of research at ASD Eurospace, has done exactly that and gone back to Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) forecasts for the space industry as they saw things in 2015. Lionnet is too polite to say the forecasts were rubbish, but points out that […]

A VIP group visited Thales Alenia Space’s satellite manufacturing facility near Cannes, in the south of France, to view SES Astra 1P, its latest satellite and which will be placed at the operator’s prime TV neighbourhood at 19.2 degrees East. The satellite will continue existing transmissions over Europe as well as key markets Germany, France […]

Currently SpaceX’s Starlink system dominates satellite-based broadband and the potential for ‘direct-to-device’ (MSS: Mobile Satellite Service) communications. However, Globalstar is rolling out its smaller constellation and has Apple helping finance its expansion. The initial problem is that both outfits use the same frequencies (as does Dish Network). SpaceX formally complained to the FCC on February […]

Officials from satellite company AST SpaceMobile met with FCC officials on December 14th 2023 over a potential problem with its frequency registrations. AST is building a super-constellation of satellites with the intention of supply a ‘direct-to-smartphone’ service. AT&T, Vodafone and Google are investors in the company. AST is using Papua New Guinea (PNG) as its […]

Europe already has one rival to its giant Ariane rocket in the form of the Vega mid-sized launcher. However, Vega is itself subject to delays caused by a failure at the end of 2022 and in any case is only good for lower weight or orbital tasks. Stephane Israel, chief executive of Arianespace, questioned the […]

Fitch Ratings has taken another look at Eutelsat’s prospects and downgraded the satellite operator to ‘BB-‘ and with an ‘Outlook Negative’ view because of its “OneWeb challenges”, its higher execution risks, and competition for OneWeb from other LEO constellations. Fitch expects Eutelsat to have to borrow more cash to fund the OneWeb expansion plan. Fitch’s […]

SpaceX now has a mega-constellation of some 5,400 Starlink satellites in orbit. Some of these are its Version 2 craft with sophisticated laser links and extremely rapid inter-satellite links. The 9,000+ installed laser links amount to a massive throughput for the fleet which Starlink says is 42 PetaBytes (PB) per day or 1260 PB/month. There […]

It seems like we’ve been waiting for ‘the other shoe to drop’ and someone to buy Paramount for a long time. Even the group’s own CEO holds staff ‘town halls’ openly discussing likely bids while enjoining them to concentrate on their jobs and his own growth plans. That will be a good trick, if they […]

The long-running dispute between SES and Intelsat over how the FCC’s C-band payments have been allocated has prompted SES to ask Intelsat’s Bankruptcy Court to hold a hearing in April. The hearing, if granted, will be heard and mediated by Judge Mark Colombell in Virginia. “SES believes that a hearing would be beneficial to address […]

Such is the market’s enthusiasm for AST SpaceMobile’s prospects that the company’s financial underwriters have successfully placed another 4.83 million shares and, after fees and expenses, the net proceeds will be $14.1 million (€13m). Texas-based AST is proposing a global satellite ‘direct-to-smartphone’ service to commence within the next year or so. Last week it received […]