Stories about the satellite communication industry.
The FCC opened its new space office on Tuesday to help the agency better consider the thousands of applications it receives each year for satellite approval and authorization of novel space activities. The agency is currently considering more than 60,000 applications for new satellites—the largest backlog in the FCC’s history. “This effort is part of […]
Everywhere Communications, a seven-year-old company providing satellite-enabled emergency comms for teams operating in extreme environments, has announced new integrations in its emergency notification and messaging platform. Everywhere, all at once: The Annapolis, MD-based software company aims to provide a “single pane of glass” for companies to communicate with teams operating out in the field, wherever […]
Earlier this week, Rivada Space Networks announced that Aalyria will help manage and optimize communications across its planned LEO constellation. Aalyria emerged out of stealth late last year, with a trove of valuable IP it acquired from Google parent Alphabet. Rivada 101 Last year, Rivada announced itself to the world with a splashy plan to […]
CesiumAstro announced this morning that it is officially getting into the in-flight connectivity (IFC) market. The company is planning to test a flat active phased array payload that can connect with satellites in orbit more easily and effectively than current systems, and has several demonstrations aboard Airbus craft set for the coming year. Active phased […]
Live long and prosper… Another day, another three-comma space contract. Terran Orbital said Wednesday that it won a $2.4B contract to design, build, and deploy a 300-bird constellation for Rivada Space Networks. The Rivada constellation will consist of 288 LEO satellites and 12 spares. They’ll be linked by lasers, packing on-board data routers, and tasked […]
Breaking: Whale, Bird Will Skip Across Pond This week, Inmarsat and Airbus announced the kind of complicated logistical operation that you can only see in the space sector. But for this specific mission, neither company is launching anything into space yet. Instead, they’re shipping a next-gen GEO satellite across the Atlantic. Unpacking the announcement Airbus […]
Coming soon, Android users practically anywhere around the globe will be able to send green texts messages from anywhere, even when out of range of any terrestrial cell tower. Iridium and Qualcomm are partnering to make it happen. Today at CES in Las Vegas, Iridium CEO Matt Desch announced that in mid-2023, several new premium […]
For the first orbital launch of 2023, SpaceX’s Transporter-6 mission launched 114 small satellites into orbit. The spacecraft on the manifest ranged from cubesats to hosted payloads to orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs). The Transporter satellite rideshare missions increasingly remind us of nesting dolls, as they launch space vehicles that in turn deploy even more space […]
SatixFy completed its SPAC merger with Endurance Acquisition Corp ($EDNC) last week, after shareholders voted to approve the deal Wednesday. The Israeli satcom company had its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, Oct. 28, represented by the ticker $SATX. SatixFy 101 The company is a fabless chipmaker and developer […]
There are going to be a lot of cell towers in space. Last week, Sateliot said it was working with Amazon to build a cloud-native narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) 5G connectivity service using its planned LEO constellation on AWS. Now, we’ll run that last sentence through Payload’s jargon translator: The San Diego/Barcelona-based startup hopes to be […]
On Tuesday evening, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral with precious cargo: SES-20 and -21. The American launch provider successfully deployed the satellites for SES, their owner and operator, roughly six hours later into a near-geosynchronous orbit. SES bought the two birds from Boeing in 2020. The all-electric satellites […]
It seems like every agency in Washington is taking a closer look at satellite constellations these days. That extra attention may lead to new hoops for satellite operators to jump through. Last week, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on megaconstellations. GAO noted that new, growing fleets of satellites drive direct value […]
