Advanced Television

Satellite

SpaceX: 2.7m customers and $180bn value

SpaceX says it now has 2.7 million “customers – a rise of 100,000 in just three weeks. This is a growth rate of some 4,700 new users per day. If this rate is maintained, then another 1 million users by year-end is possible if not probable. A report from analysts at investment bank Morgan Stanley […]

April 9, 2024

Boeing, Virgin Galactic in court battle

On March 21st aerospace giant Boeing entered a writ against Virgin Galactic in the US District Court of Virginia. The action alleged that Virgin owed Boeing $26 million (€24m) and that it had misappropriated certain IP and trade secrets associated with the development for a new space tourism aircraft for Virgin. Boeing, and an associated […]

April 8, 2024

Jupiter-3 a changemaker

EchoStar’s Jupiter-3 satellite is a true giant for subsidiary HughesNet. When stowed within the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket (on July 28th 2023) it was described as being about the size of a school bus. Within hours of its launch it was successfully receiving and sending signals. However, today’s picture is not quite so rosy. Despite […]

April 5, 2024

Terran Orbital is again Compliant

Terran Orbital, which has a very healthy order book for smaller satellites (including 300 for Rivada Networks), is again “compliant” as far as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is concerned. It means that its shares have been traded at above $1 per share since late-February. NYSE rules state that shares priced below $1 cannot […]

April 4, 2024

AST SpaceMobile hit by delays

AST SpaceMobile is being rebranded to AST Networks. That was the one positive slice of news to emerge from its end-of-year results. The company’s overall news didn’t help confidence with investors and its share price crashed 13.6 per cent on April 1st and another 24 per cent on April 2nd. AST undoubtedly has a great […]

April 3, 2024By Chris Forrester

Telesat suffers from declining DTH

Ottawa-based satellite operator Telesat has reported it is under further pressure from its declining DTH video business but maintained its formal guidance for this year’s revenue and profit targets. However, the disappointing results sent its share price tumbling 11 per cent despite some optimism for the company’s transition to a LEO operator. April 1st brought […]

April 2, 2024By Chris Forrester

FCC approves SpaceX D2D application

During March the FCC approved some SpaceX applications and firmly denied others. But on March 28th it approved a request from SpaceX that was filed a few days earlier on March 25th. The application is for “experimental” (“Special Temporary Authority”) test transmissions direct-to-cellular devices from Starlink satellites. The approval kicks in on April 15th and […]

April 2, 2024By Chris Forrester

SpaceX: Triple launch including Eutelsat

SpaceX engineers had a busy March 30th. They successfully launched Eutelsat’s latest satellite (36D) from Cape Kennedy and managed another launch a couple of hours later which carried their own first batch of Starlink broadband satellites for the weekend. But a planned third launch (from California) was scrubbed because of bad weather. The third launch […]

April 2, 2024

FCC denies SpaceX access to extra spectrum

SpaceX has been asking the FCC for permission to share spectrum already allocated to Globalstar and Dish Network AWS-4 spectrum. The FCC has dismissed SpaceX’s application. The SpaceX application had included deployment of 7,500 Starlink ‘second-generation’ satellites with equipment operating in the 1610-1617.775 MHz (Earth to space), 2483.5-1500 MHz (space to Earth, and in the […]

March 28, 2024By Chris Forrester

Ligado close to bankruptcy

Ligado Networks is in trouble. It is suing various US government Agencies for $40 billion (€37.1bn) of compensation and claiming that the Agencies “roadblocked” Legado’s FCC-licensed L-band frequencies and spectrum because the US government wanted the spectrum itself. The L-band spectrum was granted to Ligado by the FCC in 2020 with permission to roll out […]

March 28, 2024By Chris Forrester