The ITU’s Radio Regulations Board (RRB) has approved a ‘milestone waiver’ for Rivada Space and its first batch of 300 satellites. This decision removes a major worry for Rivada which – had the waiver not been granted – would have near-scuppered the Ka-band project. The overall system calls for two batches each of 300 satellites. […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket-to-broadband business has been valued at about a $150 billion (€137.6bn) business. The value comes as Musk is offering to sell shares to the unquoted company that would raise the current value to about $150 billion, says Bloomberg News, quoting people familiar with the matter. SpaceX is offering shares at more than […]
Sweden-based Ovzon, which is building an orbital broadband system, is again being forced to apply to the ITU to relax its ‘bringing into use’ regulations. It isn’t Ovzon’s fault because satellite builder Maxar Technologies is late with delivering Ovzon-3. Maxar says that it has had to replace a defective component on the satellite. But it […]
SpaceX successfully launched a powerful and much-needed Indonesian communications satellite on June 18th. The new craft, SATRIA, is the linchpin in a $550 million project to provide high-speed internet access to schools, medical centres and thousands of public and government facilities across the island nation. A Falcon 9 rocket, using a booster stage that was […]
A report from analysts at Northern Sky Research (NSR) titled The Rise of Constellations reminds NSR clients that the emergence on non-Geostationary satellites is dramatically changing the satellite industry. NSR says: “Starlink, OneWeb & mPower are in their advanced stages, and upcoming constellations such as Kuiper, Telesat and others are deploying or planning to deploy […]
SpaceX is targeting today (June 12th) to launch an additional 53 Starlink satellites into orbit, subject to the usual weather considerations. The launch, at 3.10pm (Florida time) continues the near-nonstop cadence of SpaceX overall activity. On the West Coast SpaceX is also targeting June 12th for a Falcon’s launch of the Transporter-8 mission to low-Earth […]
Josef Aschbacher, Director General at European Space Agency (ESA) has praised Elon Musk’s SpaceX, saying that the rocket launch company “has undeniably changed the launcher market paradigm as we know it.” Aschbacher, in a blog post for ESA, said: “With the dependable reliability of Falcon 9 and the captivating prospects of Starship, SpaceX continues to […]
SpaceX has scheduled the launch of Arabsat’s latest satellite for May 23rd. Launch is scheduled for 11.25 pm Florida-time, but the mission launch is very much subject to local weather considerations. A back-up launch could happen exactly 24-hours later if weather halts the mission. BADR-8 is a latest next-generation geostationary Eurostar Neo satellite from Airbus. […]
SpaceX is prepping for a busy weekend. On May 19th it will handle two missions: The first will take 22 Generation-2 ‘Mini’ Starlink satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the early hours at 04.41 UTC. Launch two will take care of the Iridium/OneWeb mission at 13.19 UTC and from Vandenberg in […]
SpaceX regularly reuses its Falcon 9 booster rockets. Reuse levels of eight or 10 time are now fairly routine. Indeed, some boosters have now flow 13 to 15 times. William Gerstenmaier, VP/Build & Flight Reusability at SpaceX, now says that booster refurbishing is taking place to extend the life of a typical booster to a […]