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Inside Satellite

Chris Forrester

Chris Forrester is one of the most experienced and highly regarded journalists in the field. His insight and analysis, particularly in the satellite and pay-TV arena, is highly prized. He has written for all the major business journals in the sector as well as several national newspapers.

Russia denies rocket crash cause

A few days ago it was apparently ‘confirmed’ that the incorrect fitting of key attitude velocity sensors was the “most likely” cause of the failed Proton-M rocket on July 2nd.  Now it appears that is not the case. A statement from Russian deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of Russia’s space industry, […]

July 22, 2013

Proton disaster: Official report

It is now officially acknowledged that the July 2nd catastrophic failure of a Proton-M rocket was caused by the insertion of crucial sensors upside-down.  The mistake affected three of six yaw angular velocity sensors on the unmanned rocket, said deputy head of Roscosmos, Alexander Lopatin, citing a state commission’s investigation of the crash in a […]

July 19, 2013

Avanti: Problems ahead?

Inside Satellite reported on Avanti Communications’ interim financial statement on July 10th, stating that they have debts of some £500 million. This was wrong. Their gross debt is just £205 million, and they have cash at hand of £38 million. But there are still quite a few hurdles ahead for Avanti, and bills to be […]

July 15, 2013

Proton failure: “Manufacturing glitch”

Within the satellite industry there are more than a few stories of manufacturing problems. One – perhaps an industry myth – talks of an empty Cola can being left inside a satellite. Another – unfortunately not a myth – tells of incorrect software being fed into a computer that caused a rocket launch to be […]

July 12, 2013

Meltdown at Avanti

Avanti Communications has had an extremely bad week. The satellite operator, which once foolishly promised that it had enough capacity to supply much of Europe with its HDTV transmissions, is discovering that selling satellite capacity is a tough task. The world, it seemed didn’t want its Ka-band capacity located at 33.5 degrees West, especially for […]

July 11, 2013

Proton disaster: “Launched too early”

Rocket launch countdowns are highly sophisticated, computer controlled, affairs. However, early – and wholly unofficial – reports suggest that a software glitch might be to blame for the Proton launch catastrophe last week. The Proton-M rocket failed July 2nd spectacularly just seconds after lift-off, exploding into a dangerous ball from its 170 tonnes of highly […]

July 8, 2013

Arianespace offers Proton replacement

The catastrophic failure of a Russian Proton rocket has brought arch-rival Arianespace out with fighting talk, saying that if customers want it could offer another Ariane launch or two to its manifest. Given that – as a rule – an Ariane rocket launches two satellites at a time, this could rescue 4 waiting satellites between […]

July 4, 2013

Confusion over Russian rocket catastrophe

International Launch Services (ILS) which markets the launch of Proton rockets for the world’s commercial satellite operators, has distanced itself from the catastrophe, saying that its missions use an older – and tried and tested – version of the rocket that blew up. Additionally, ILS says it will set up its own independent failure review […]

July 3, 2013

Dish Network: What’s next?

Having now firmly abandoned his attempt to secure more terrestrial wireless spectrum via Sprint/Nextel and Clearwire, Dish Network’s founder Charlie Ergen – never one to be idle – must be pondering his next chess move. It is worth remembering that it wasn’t so very long ago that Dish was pursuing wireless carrier T-Mobile’s assets in […]

July 1, 2013

Success for O3b constellation

Although a day later than planned, the first four satellites in the O3b Networks constellation were successfully launched from the French Guiana site atop a Russian Soyuz rocket on June 25th. This first batch of satellites will now be placed into their correct Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and in stand by for the second batch […]

June 26, 2013