The US House Sub-committee on Communications & Technology held a hearing in Washington DC on July 16th. High on the agenda was the proposal from the C-Band Alliance on restructuring of C-band over the US for 5G. Committee chairman Michael Doyle told witnesses that in the past government-held spectrum had been successfully transitioned to the […]
Tunisia-based Telnet Group is linking with two Russian companies to help achieve a mini-constellation of 30 small satellites for Internet of Things (IoT) services. Telnet has signed a contract with Sputnix and GK Launch Services. According to the terms of the agreement, Sputnix will build the satellites that will be launched on a Soyuz-2 rocket […]
Amazon owner Jeff Bezos is ambitiously backing Project Kuiper, a concept that will see 3236 smallish satellites placed into orbit for delivering broadband just about everywhere on the planet. Investment bank Morgan Stanley says that Kuiper represents as much as a $100 billion (€88.8bn) opportunity for Bezos and his team. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas […]
The European Space Agency (ESA) is working on a new spacecraft which can ‘surf’ past space debris. There is a considerable need for ‘intelligent’ satellites that have the ability to move whilst in orbit and so avoid collision with orbital debris. The threat is very real. This debris is in the form of spacecraft abandoned […]
Congressman Mike Doyle (Dem), and the leader of the US House Telecom Panel, is drafting a Bill that would see US satellite operators sell spectrum in stages over the next 10 years, with an initial spectrum sale scheduled for September 2022, and subsequent releases of bandwidth in 2029, accordng to Bloomberg A note to clients […]
Virgin Galactic, the much-delayed space tourism and would-be satellite launch supplier, is selling 49 per cent of itself to what has been described as a ‘shell company’ Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp (SCH). The business has been set up by a former Facebook boss, Chamath Palihapitiya. SCH is itself a partnership, between Social Capital and […]
On May 24th a SpaceX rocket launched 60 tightly packed Starlink satellites into one dispenser launching them as if a string of pearls into Low Earth orbit. Three of the sixty subsequently failed, and now there are anxieties that the failure rate might be typical for future mega-constellations. The Elon Musk-backed project calls for an […]
Chinese research institute, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has confirmed it is planning an overall constellation of 72 ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) satellites over the next 3 years. Chinese private satellite operator Commsat, funded by the Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, is already active in the project. Eight communications satellites as part […]
An insurance company can take care of cover on hundreds if not thousands of homes or vehicles, or just a rocket launch or two. With the value of a large satellite, plus its launch costs, plus its post-separation first year in orbit – which mostly covers the majority of likely problems – topping $250 million, […]
Amazon has confirmed that it wants to launch 3236 satellites into space. Its ‘Project Kuiper’ has already received plenty of speculation, but now the Jeff Bezos-backed business has formally asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve the scheme, and to permit frequencies to be used. Amazon used a July 4th filing to the FCC […]