Sir Richard Branson-backed Virgin Orbit has taken a 17.5 per cent stake in Earth Observation image company Hypersat, as well as investing in a funding round for Poland-based SatRevolution. Hypersat is already a client of Virgin Orbit and used Virgin’s rocket plane to launch 6 of its Hyperspectral satellites. Poland’s SatRevolution is busy raising cash […]
The likes of Steve Collar, CEO at SES, have heavily criticised the 2021 trend to propose massive satellite constellations. Specifically, Collar had in mind the recent Rwanda proposal, with advice supplied by OneWeb founder Greg Wyler, for 327,230 orbiting satellites in low Earth orbit. Collar, speaking at the Euroconsult World Satellite Business Week in Paris, […]
Arianespace’s much-needed new Ariane 6 rocket will be available for launches in 2022. Arianespace’s CEO Stéphane Israël, speaking at the Euroconsult World Satellite Business Week in Paris, told delegates that the giant rocket would make its full test flight in the second-half of 2022. He was not specific as to when. However, there would be […]
OneWeb has signed up Alberta-based Network Innovations as a distribution partner to serve Canada “and across the globe” to benefit essential government and enterprise customers. OneWeb’s partnership with Network Innovations will focus on expanding bandwidth for government and enterprise markets. Utilising the power of OneWeb’s network, Network Innovations can augment its engineered solutions by adding […]
The European Commission has selected a second consortium to supply potential ideas for a future Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) system for Europe. Last week it named New Symphonie, which is led by Euroconsult and Unseenlabs, to present its ideas. It received €1.4 million in funding for a 6-month study. The second consortium has now been […]
Türksat 5B will be launched on December 19th, subject to the usual weather considerations. The current plan calls for the launch to take place from Florida by SpaceX on one of its Falcon 9 rockets. The satellite, built by Airbus, was shipped to Florida in November and arrived from France on November 29th. Türksat 5B […]
Northern Sky Research (NSR) forecasts that there’s going to be a huge increase in satellite-based broadband demand over the next few years. NSR’s VSAT and Broadband Satellite Market, 20th Edition finds High Throughput Satellites (HTS), themselves a major market growth factor, moving the segment from 800 Gb/s in 2020 demand to 15 Tb/s in 2030, […]
Tim Farrar of TMF Associates says the recent “breathless” valuations for SpaceX (ranging from between $80 billion to $100 billion) are inconsistent. He says the quoted company valuations have near-tripled over the past year, and with SpaceX’s share price – albeit privately held – rising from about $200 per share to $560 over the same […]
Broadband satellite operator OneWeb, which owns a 50/50 joint venture satellite construction company (with Airbus) in Florida, is to start producing its satellites in the UK. OneWeb said that the move would be worth some $3 billion (€2.6bn) to the UK economy. Chris McLaughlin, OneWeb’s head of government affairs, said that a manufacturing programme would […]
Paris-based analysts Euroconsult say that over the remaining years of this decade to 2030 there will be an average of 1,700 satellites launched each year. The numbers reflect a four-fold increase in numbers (although only a doubling in terms of mass). Euroconsult says the race is heating up to rapidly deploy commercial mega constellations for […]