First, the good news: AST SpaceMobile has opened an $800 million ‘At The Market’ offering of new shares to a cluster of banks. The money is now available as needed by AST and if fully drawn down is equal to about 3 per cent of the shares issued. It means that AST is sitting on […]
Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67 per cent) and Leonardo (33 per cent), has today unveiled its Space Smart Factory in Rome with a ceremony attended by Italian President Sergio Mattarella. The factory — one of Europe’s largest intelligent, digital, reconfigurable manufacturing facilities — is located at the Tecnopolo Tiburtino high-tech innovation […]
Telefónica is reportedly considering a major workforce reduction that could affect around 6,000 employees, according to industry sources. However, company representatives have clarified that “there is currently no formal redundancy plan (ERE) on the table”. The potential adjustment aligns with the group’s ongoing efforts to simplify its organisational structure and optimise resources — goals reiterated […]
A study by global tech strategists Juniper Research has found that global satellite provider revenue from fixed satellite broadband will increase from $10 billion in 2025 to $20 billion (€17.1bn) in 2030. This revenue growth will be enabled by rapid investment in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) technology, which allows satellite providers to improve the latency […]
Scott Wisniewski, AST SpaceMobile’s (AST) president used a Bloomberg Businessweek TV interview on October 2nd to explain in some details how tests of its satellite to ground transmissions were going. Wisniewski said that AST’s signals would cope with “one wall” of a premises or inside a car. He told Bloomberg that a user simply would […]
Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell has told EarthSky that one or two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth every day. McDowell’s website, Jonathan’s Space Report, is widely regarded as a definitive source on spacecraft that go up … and eventually come down. The lifespan of low-Earth orbit satellites, such as Starlink, is only about five […]
Mark Jamison, Non-resident Senior Fellow at public policy think tank The American Enterprise Institute, has suggested it is time to disband the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), arguing that it has “run its course”, having become “a convenient political tool”. Writing in the AEIdeas blog, he suggests that current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr now has the […]
Pierre Lionnet, Research & Managing Director at ESD Eurospace, says that Russia is planning to launch 900 satellites into low Earth orbit and to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink. The system, called Rassvet (or perhaps Rassviett) already has six craft in orbit. Lionnet says the satellites are built by a newcomer in the sector, Byuro 1440 […]
Bell Canada has announced it is launching a direct-to-cell satellite service in 2026 – offering customers video, voice, text and broadband data – through a partnership with Texas-based AST SpaceMobile. It’s the latest effort by the Canadian company to provide connectivity to the country’s most rural and challenging geographies, as global space companies race to […]
Two massive AST SpaceMobile (AST) satellites will take place shortly. The first called BlueBird 6 (also known as FM1) will be on its way to India for a launch. The second, BlueBird 7 (aka FM2) will be launched by SpaceX and will be delivered to Cape Canaveral during October. But these two AST satellites are […]