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.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has always worked on the basis that it would reward contributing nations with contracts that were more or less equal to their investments into ESA. There are 22 member states in ESA including the UK. This return on investment is dubbed by ESA as its “geographic return”. A meeting of […]
Munich-based Alpine Space Ventures has raised $155 million (€144.6m) for its space-focused venture capital fund, and says it expects this to grow to $160 million by the end of June. Co-founder of the business Joram Voelklein says the fund has received “sizeable” investments from the European Investment Fund (EIF) of €60 million and NATO’s Innovation […]
Satellite operator SES has its latest satellite, Astra 1P (also known as SES-24) on SpaceX’s Florida launch pad. Subject to the usual weather considerations it should launch on June 19th at 5.25pm Eastern time. As this is written, however, there are strong winds at the Cape which might delay the launch which was originally scheduled […]
Aerospacelab, a Belgian start-up, has commenced building a factory designed to produce up to 500 satellites annually. The new company, financed in part by national and regional aid, plans to start building satellites weighing from 150 kgs each up to one tonne. It already has eight satellites in orbit, four of which were launched on […]
IRIS2 is the European Commission’s (EC) scheme for a major super-secure satellite constellation. It is already extremely late in coming to any sort of agreement as to how its proposed public/private finance can be structured. Now the European Space Agency (ESA) has spoken out with something of a rescue plan. ESA director general Josef Aschbacher […]
Space tourism business Virgin Galactic announced a reverse stock split where existing shareholders received one new share for every 20 that they owned. The move, an attempt to stay within the rules of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), did no favours for the company and prompted at 14 per cent fall in value in […]
Intelsat emerged from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2022. However, there were many smaller matters that its bankruptcy court still had outstanding, not least a dispute between Intelsat and SES over how the FCC’s C-band incentive payments were to be divided. Over the past few months, these minor elements have all been resolved. Smaller […]
Eutelsat’s OneWeb constellation could soon be active over India thanks to its Indian shareholders Bharti Airtel. The latest reports from India suggest that OneWeb’s permissions to operate over India could be approved later this month. Elon Musk’s Starlink, despite favourable comments from India’s prime minister Modi, is still suffering regulatory delays. Starlink has received permission […]
Omnispace, a would-be mega-constellation satellite operator, is alleging potentially harmful interference to its licensed frequences by SpaceX’s Starlink broadband-by-satellite signals. A May 30th letter from Omnispace to the FCC argues that SpaceX’s experimental licence “violates the terms of its authorisation by operating at an altitude inconsistent with the [FCC] filing.” The letter to the FCC […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX will attempt the fourth test flight of its massive Starship rocket on June 6th. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued its permission for the flight on June 4th. The FAA authorisation was modified from previous Starship flights, and the end result is that future launches will find an easier route to flight. […]
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