Ottawa-based satellite operator Telesat’s CEO Dan Goldberg told delegates to the Washington Satellite 2024 event that Telesat was not restricting its ambitions to the 198-craft Lightspeed mega-constellation of low Earth orbiting satellites. “Is 198 satellites enough? Yes, certainly to get started,” Goldberg stated. “With 198 satellites we’ll have terabytes and terabytes of fully global, highly […]

Ghana’s Ministry of Communications & Digitisation has decided to permit SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service to operate. The decision came a week after major disruption to four undersea high-volume broadband cables. The disruption caused considerable difficulties for banking, business and consumers throughout Ghana. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the country’s minister of communications, made the announcement. “We have licensed […]

SpaceX‘s president and COO Gwynne Shotwell was the star speaker at the Washington Satellite 2024 event. She touched on many key elements. She told delegates to the Satellite 2024 event in Washington that Starship Flight #3 was “incredibly successful” and that #4 would take place in “about 6 weeks”. But the flight would not carry […]

Jessica Rosenworcel, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) addressed for the second year in a row the Satellite Industry Association at the Annual Leadership Dinner being held at the Washington Satellite 2024 event. She told delegates how the FCC’s new Space Bureau, established just a year previous, was now issuing licences for lunar communications, […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) has allocated a budget of €233 million to build a satellite with a target millimetre-level accuracy as the initial ‘demonstrator’ move for its Genesis and LEO-PNT scheme. The budget also covers two 5-satellite mini-constellations for a future orbital Positioning, Navigation and Timing system which are key elements for its Sat-Nav […]

Viasat has won a contract to equip 40 more Korean Air planes with In-Flight broadband connectivity. The latest aircraft set to be connected in the Korean Air fleet will be 40 Boeing 787s, following news shared last year that Korean Air had committed to equipping 30 Airbus A321Neos with Viasat connectivity – its first in-flight […]

Eutelsat’s OneWeb division already has a bandwidth relationship with Intelsat. It has extended that agreement in a “multi-year” deal worth up to $500 million (€461.2m) over the next seven years, and with an initial commitment of $250 million. Intelsat’s intention is to tap into OneWeb low-Earth orbiting constellation and integrate services such as connectivity for […]

David Wajsgras, CEO at Intelsat, used his Keynote at the Washington Satellite 2024 show to explain how the satellite giant was changing from its past role, albeit important global supplier of bandwidth, to what he saw as new opportunities. Included in his discussion was news that Intelsat was close to deciding on a Medium-Earth orbiting […]

The Satellite 2024 conference in Washington opened with its regular panel of satellite manufacturing executives. They admitted that demand for their geostationary craft had dropped. Chris Johnson, CEO at Maxar Space, agreed that demand for geostationary satellites had certainly declined but was far from dead: “It is evolving,” he told delegates, and estimated that the […]

Data from astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell shows that 6,011 SpaceX ‘Starlink’ broadband satellites have been launched as at March 16th. He adds that 5,614 are still in orbit, of which 64 appear failed and 122 appear to be in the process of deliberate retirement. SpaceX launched this latest batch of 23 satellites into orbit on March […]