Despite being just days away from receiving the final approval for its planned merger with Viasat, London-based Inmarsat has ordered up three new satellites. The new craft measure just 1.5 cubic metres (plus the solar arrays) and are about one-fifth of the size and weight of conventional geostationary satellites. They will form Inmarsat’s I-8 fleet. […]
Terran orbital has broken ground on a new factory which will eventually start production of 300 satellites for Rivada Space Networks. The factory is a 94,000 sq ft site in Irvine, California (in the Goodyear Business Park). The facility will serve as Terran Orbital’s fifth production facility. Demolition of the existing building commenced in February […]
Arianespace will launch its final Ariane 5 rocket on June 16th. The mission aims to launch two satellites: Syracuse 4B, built by Airbus Defence and Space for a French government defence role, and the Heinrich-Hertz-Mission, built by OHB for the German space agency DLR. The flight represents the end of the Ariane 5, a system […]
Florida-based Terran Orbital is having a tough time. Following on from its May 15th quarterly report its share price dropped by almost 18 per cent, not helped by concerns that a major client might also be suffering a cash squeeze. May 16th saw a modest recovery of 1.6 per cent in its share price. Terran […]
Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (Yahsat), the UAE satellite solutions provider listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, has announced its consolidated financial results for the quarter ending March 31st 2023. Yahsat continued to deliver year-on-year growth in revenue, EBITDA and Net Income, which increased 2 per cent, 4 per cent and 35 per cent […]
The Global Satellite Operators Association (GSOA) and the Global VSAT Forum (GVF) have announced that their respective Boards have approved combining both associations. The combination taking effect on June 1st will result in GSOA becoming a trade association comprised of 70 member companies spanning the entire satellite ecosystem from around the globe, with relationships developed […]
Israel-based satellite technology connectivity company Gilat Satellite Networks reported revenue up 15 per cent for its Q1 trading period (at $59 million (€53.8m), compared to $51.4 million in the same period last year). Gilat raised its GAAP operating income guidance to between $16 to $20 million for the full year, representing year-over-year growth of 81 […]
It isn’t so very long ago that electrical propulsion for satellites was a very new kid on the block. Boeing’s Xenon-Ion Propulsion System (XIPS) was introduced on the (then) Hughes 702 versions its high-power versions of its popular HS-702 craft and used for final orbital insertion. December 1999 saw the launch of an HS-702 with […]
EchoStar is sitting on a war chest of $1.7 billion in cash, and wants to invest in an expanded fleet of wide-band satellites to augment its existing 28-craft fleet of Lyra narrowband satellites. The news emerged in EchoStar’s post-result analyst call when CEO Hamid Akhavan said: “We are in the design and engineering phase of […]
SES CEO Steve Collar, speaking to analysts following on from the satellite operator’s Q1 results on May 4th, said the European Union’s third global satellite constellation, IRIS², was a “strategic project” for SES. Nevertheless, he admitted that while enthusiastic there were still many known unknowns and it was too early to be more specific. “We’re […]