Eutelsat Communications has announced the safe arrival of EUTELSAT 5 West B at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it is due for launch on a Proton Breeze M rocket on September 30th, overseen by International Launch Services. Built by Airbus Defence and Space and Northrop Grumman, EUTELSAT 5 West B will serve video markets […]

The space agencies of India and France have signed an agreement to develop a constellation of broadband satellites. The constellation will carry telecommunications, radar, and optical remote-sensing instruments, which are supposed to be the world’s first space-based system that can track ships continuously. The agreement was signed by France’s CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall and […]

London-based speciality satellite operator Avanti Communications says it wants to cancel its listing of its ordinary shares from the London ‘junior’ exchange Alternative Investment Market. It made the announcement early on August 20th. Avanti says: “The proposed cancellation is part of the ongoing transformation of the Company as the Directors believe the currently market valuation […]

California-based Viasat and Paris-based Eutelsat were once extremely friendly, and still have good – formal – relations with one another although not quite as strong as a couple of years ago. The pair are bound together in a joint-venture over the use of spectrum on Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat, and while initially the joint venture was intended […]

Japanese investment fund SoftBank has written down the value of its significant stake in satellite constellation OneWeb by £380 million (€414.7m). OneWeb has also attracted investment cash from Virgin Group, Airbus and others, and while it already has 6 trial satellites orbiting, plans on increasing the fleet by about 650 satellites over the next 2 […]

Dish farms are massive arrays of uplink and downlink parabolic dishes in a teleport which communicate with orbiting geostationary satellites. The dishes are huge, typically measuring 7-10 metres across, and very expensive. Moreover, even the specifically designed tracking antennas (usually of about 3 metres across) are of limited use for handling signals to or from […]

The C-Band Alliance (CBA) made another filing on August 14th to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and again fired a blistering extra salvo at suggestions made by the ACA Connects Coalition (ACACC). Peter Pitsch, CBA’s Head of Advocacy and Government Affairs said: “Our Reply Comment documents the numerous timing, technological and legal flaws that various […]

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceport in New Mexico is “operationally functional”. While, to date, Virgin’s rocket plane test flights have taken place in the Mojave Desert in California, the new site is at ‘Spaceport America’ in New Mexico, a purpose-built facility which has been “designed to enable Virgin Galactic to create an unparalleled experience […]

SpaceX has had something of a maritime fleet from its beginnings. Its ‘Of course I still love you’ floating barge has been the landing stage for many of SpaceX flights. The second floating barge, with the giant text message saying “Just read the instructions” does a similar job usually on the Pacific. Elon Musk’s team […]

The C-Band Alliance has won significant extra support for its reallocation of satellite spectrum over the US to help speed 5G’s adoption. The support comes from CBS, Discovery, Fox, Disney, Univision and Viacom, which in a 19-page filing to the FCC make it very clear that during the past 13 months they (the ‘Content Companies’) […]