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Space Scotland congregate at Farnborough

A group of 50 Scottish entrepreneurs under the ‘Space Scotland’ banner will appear at the Farnborough International Airshow (July 18-22) and backed by Highlands & Islands Enterprise together with thirteen companies from Space Scotland who will be sponsoring the trip and crewing the set-up over the five days. Included in the sponsoring firms are all […]

July 18, 2022

Ergen’s 5G at risk

Terrestrial 5G telephony in the US wants to use the 12.2-12.7 GHz wireless band. The problem is that satellite operators also use the same frequencies. OneWeb, a would-be satellite constellation, in a letter to the Federal communications Commission (FCC) on July 11th argued that the FCC should reject Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network plans to use […]

July 15, 2022

EC ignoring existing LEO constellations

The European Commission (EC), along with the European Space Agency (ESA), continues to firmly back the establishment of an independent and European-backed low Earth orbiting (LEO) broadband constellation. However, there’s criticism that the proposed €6 billion scheme is unnecessary and that there are plenty of commercial schemes more than capable of filling consumer demand. The […]

July 14, 2022

Starlink to save on geostationary costs

SpaceX’s live coverage of its Starlink launches and its landings at sea make spectacular viewing, but the images come at a significant cost. SpaceX’s Starlink contracts with geostationary operators, which provided the return path to SpaceX’s HQ, are hefty deals. “At over $165,000 per month for 25 Mb/s download by 25 Mb/s upload of pre-paid […]

July 13, 2022

OneWeb talks India launches

OneWeb says that an upcoming launch of batches of its satellites on Indian rockets will help speed the deployment of its broadband-by-satellite service in India. OneWeb, backed in part by Bharti Group and the UK government, admitted that its launch schedule had been impacted by the Russia-Ukraine war but hoped to recover some of the […]

July 12, 2022

Record-breaking year for launches

2022 is on track to break all records for rocket launches. Indeed, Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone is responsible for a significant number of these launches; SpaceX added 16 launches spread across its own Starlink craft plus NASA missions as well as commercial launches. But China is matching SpaceX and, as at July 8th, had managed […]

July 11, 2022

Eutelsat Hotbird 13F passes tech tests

The European Space Agency (ESA) says that its first satellite to be built under its Eurostar ‘Neo’ programme has completed mechanical tests designed to demonstrate its ability to withstand the vibration that occurs during launch. The satellite is being developed by Airbus and will eventually be Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13F when launched but at the moment […]

July 8, 2022

Virgin Galactic to build new motherships

Virgin Galactic has signed a contract with a subsidiary of Boeing to build two new ‘mothership’ aircraft which will be used as launch platforms for its future spaceplanes and launching of satellites. Virgin has ordered the aircraft from Aurora Flight Sciences. They will take the place of its current WhiteKnightTwo (also known as Virgin Mothership […]

July 7, 2022

Intense launch schedule for SpaceX

SpaceX rocket engineers and technicians are gearing up for an intense period of launches for its Starlink broadband-by-satellite programme. The five planned launches from July 7th to July 14th will likely carry at least 200 satellites into orbit. Additionally, SpaceX has some commercial obligations to fulfil including a NASA flight (Dragon CRS-2 around July 15th) […]

July 5, 2022

It’s the economy, stupid!

That three-word slogan, famously pinned to the wall in the Clinton (Bill) campaign HQ in their winning 1992 run, has been deployed in many – sometimes quite random – circumstances since. It should be dusted down when looking around at near term prospects for the TV economy. In recent years there has been a significant […]

July 4, 2022