Expedition Space: Space Launch, Events, News

by Jason Rainbow   Intelsat’s Q1 earnings down 50% year over year despite higher revenue due to Gogo acquisition COVID-19 drags down SES Q1 revenue; operator says video decline is slowing Intelsat and SES C-band legal battle rages on   TAMPA, Fla. — Satellite operators Intelsat and SES say they are on track to meet a key C-band spectrum clearing deadline this year, despite ongoing COVID-19 disruption. The pandemic has been slowing supply chains for delivering upgrades and filters needed to clear the frequencies for terrestrial 5G wireless operators — and limiting access to sites to install them. But Intelsat and SES, which hold the lion’s share of C-band in the United States and will get around $9 billion combined if they clear their part of the 300 megahertz of auctioned spectrum in time, said during financial results they are on track for the first big deadline Dec. 5. That is when a portion of the spectrum currently being used to provide TV and radio to nearly ...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has contracted low Earth orbit broadband venture OneWeb to demo managed satcom services in strategic Arctic locations. Project prime contractor Hughes Network Systems, a OneWeb investor supplying parts of its ground segment, will test the services between certain U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) sites. “The OneWeb constellation has been designed to enable low-latency broadband access across the globe, allowing connectivity in previously unreached areas—a capability that is ideal for tactical, multi-domain operations in the Polar region and beyond,” OneWeb head of government services Dylan Browne said in a statement. The Department of Defense contract is part of the U.S. Air Force’s Defense Experimentation Using the Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program. OneWeb’s satellites are in polar orbits, and Browne told SpaceNews in March that this gives the company an advantage for Arctic regions of growin...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — Europe is preparing for more emergency in-orbit maneuvers in an increasingly crowded space environment, after its Galileo satellite navigation constellation had to dodge debris for the first time March 6. The GSAT0219 satellite’s operations were suspended a day before the move, enabling it to steer clear of an inert Ariane 4 rocket fragment in medium Earth orbit (MEO). The constellation’s navigational services were uninterrupted as it drew on 22 operational satellites in the network, according to Pierlugi Fedele, Galileo service provision manager at prime contractor Spaceopal. Spaceopal, a joint venture between European space mission integrator Telespazio and German space agency DLR, received an alert Feb. 21 from the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (EUSST) consortium of a potential collision in 10 days. Fedele and his team at Spaceopal spent the time leading up to its emergency maneuver assessing the risk and how to counter it without interrupt...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — AST SpaceMobile, which became a public company in April to develop a cellphone-compatible satellite broadband constellation, is expanding its leadership team. The Texas-based company appointed Brian Heller as vice president, general counsel and secretary, and Scott Wisniewski as executive vice president and chief strategy officer. Brian Heller, AST SpaceMobile EVP, general counsel and secretary. Credit: AST SpaceMobile Heller has experience with two companies that were public before they were sold in 2019. He had served as general counsel of Castle Brands, a publicly traded spirits company before its sale to beverage giant Pernod Ricard. He also served as senior vice president of business and legal affairs at Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services, which traded on the public market until being sold to private equity. Wisniewski was previously managing director of technology, media and telecoms investment banking at Barclays, where he advised clie...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — Companies that build or operate Earth observation satellites foresee busier days ahead as governments, and businesses, step up climate change initiatives. Geospatial monitoring is key for tracking, understanding and ultimately cutting greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to what is increasingly seen as an environmental emergency. U.S. President Joe Biden set a target April 22 for the country to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% levels by 2030. The pledge came three months after Biden signed an executive order committing the United States to rejoin the Paris Agreement, a global partnership aiming to drive action on climate change. The emissions goal, announced during a virtual climate summit of world leaders convened by Biden, delays the Obama administration’s deadline by five years but nearly doubles the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the United States aims to cut relative to 2005 levels.  Meanwhile, businesses are increasing...

by Jason Rainbow Satellites are leading the charge in the battle against climate change, providing critical insights about Earth that can only be gained from space. But are they also contributing to the problem? Putting aside environmental impacts of the rockets that launch them to orbit, satellites inject a complex mix of chemicals into the atmosphere when their computers, fuel tanks and other onboard materials vaporize upon reentry. This wasn’t much of a talking point decades ago when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) determined, categorically, that nothing it regulates in space could have an environmental impact on Earth. Until recently, the number of satellites in space was so small, and their orbits usually so high, that there were very few re-entries. However, the rise of Starlink and other megaconstellations with thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) are changing this. Around 9,000 artificial satellites have been launched into space since Sputni...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — The space market is at a watershed moment as private and public investments continue to surge. Boutique research and advisory firm Quilty Analytics recorded $5.7 billion in investments for the first quarter of 2021, a 356% increase from $1.2 billion in the same period last year. Growing investor appetite in the public markets is mainly behind this eye-watering figure, bringing a paradigm shift for the industry. Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), blank check firms that list on a public market before merging with businesses to fast-track investor exits, have been soaring in popularity in space and other industries.  Even putting the SPAC trend aside, Quilty Analytics associate Jeff Thoben said space investment is “reaching near-manic levels” as private equity consolidator activity also ramps up in the market. A low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband “comeback” was a notable theme for the first three months of this year, Thoben said, as oper...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — Maxar Technologies has appointed Chris Johnson as senior vice president of space programs delivery (SPD), overseeing spacecraft and robotic systems from design to distribution. Johnson has spent more than 20 years at Boeing, where he was most recently president of Boeing Satellite Systems International. At Boeing, Maxar said he was responsible for strategy, capture, development and manufacturing of the company’s commercial satellite business. “We are exceptionally pleased to have a leader of Chris’s caliber join Maxar’s executive leadership team and take on this critical role,” Maxar CEO Dan Jablonsky said in a statement.   “His track record of performance and deep understanding of every aspect of satellite manufacturing and space programs will be invaluable as we continue to grow our space business and deliver innovative, reliable and cost-effective solutions for our commercial and government customers.” Johnson’s new position will be eff...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — Europe’s small launch vehicle Vega returned to flight April 28, carrying a next-generation imaging satellite for Airbus Defence and Space that has been held back by multiple delays. Arianespace successfully launched the rocket 9:50 p.m. Eastern from the Guiana Space Center. Pleiades Neo 3, the first high-resolution 30-centimeter satellite in a new constellation built and operated by Airbus, was released from the rocket in a mission that lasted one hour and 42 minutes following takeoff. Five auxiliary payloads were on the rocket’s Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) deployment system: Norwegian space agency’s Norsat-3 observation microsatellite and four cubesats for Eutelsat, NanoAvionics/Aurora Insight and Spire. It is Vega’s first mission since a Nov.16 launch failure destroyed two Earth observation satellites: Spanish operator Hisdesat’s SEOSAT-Ingenio and the TARANIS spacecraft built by French Space Agency CNES.  An independent inves...

by Jason Rainbow The E in ESG is getting another boost as the United States rejoins the climate change fight, and space promises to play a central role. A rising number of companies have already added ESG scorecards to their annual reports, detailing the progress they are making toward environmental, social and corporate governance goals. As the importance of ESG grows , the space industry will become an increasingly critical part of how every company operates. The momentum has been accelerating after BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager overseeing roughly $9 trillion of assets, said last year it would base all its decisions on ESG criteria. “Climate risk is investment risk,” BlackRock chief executive officer Larry Fink wrote in his annual letter to other CEOs. Planet SkySat captures the March 2021 Fagradalsfjall volcano eruption in Iceland in near-infrared to track the path of molten lava. Credit: Planet Labs Inc. The concept got a major push when Allison Lee, acting...

by Jason Rainbow ESG, which stands for environment, social and governance, is a set of nonfinancial criteria that community-minded and bottom-line investors alike are increasingly using to value businesses. Companies are adding ESG targets and updates on reaching them to their financial statements, where they also record revenues and profits, to help guide socially conscious investors. ESG data such as how much pollution a company emits, or how it affects water quality, also helps all types of investors identify material risks and growth opportunities in the future. “What is going to happen in the next few years, and it’s starting now, is a giant reformation of global capitalism,” according to Andrew Zolli, vice president of impact initiatives for U.S. satellite imagery operator Planet. “Where these kinds of factors are measured and they work to inform the cost of actions — whether it’s the price of the stock, whether it’s the creditworthiness of a municipal bond or whether it’s...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — Serial entrepreneur Max Polyakov has made the next step in his vertically integrated space strategy, acquiring South African small satellite specialist Dragonfly Aerospace for an undisclosed sum. Dragonfly mainly builds high-resolution cameras for spacecraft but plans to produce small satellites that could be launched by Firefly Aerospace, which Polyakov owns through his Silicon Valley-based investment vehicle Noosphere Ventures Partners. Other space businesses in Noosphere’s portfolio include satellite imagery startup EOS Data Analytics (EOSDA), electric propulsion systems maker SETS and orbital transfer vehicle provider D-Orbit. Dragonfly said its team has more than 20 years of experience in imaging satellites and payloads, mainly through the high-resolution cameras tha t it builds. The company said in October that it will build two satellite cameras for EOSDA’s first satellite, a crop-monitoring spacecraft slated to launch in 2022. “Dragonfly Ae...

by Jason Rainbow TAMPA, Fla. — French satellite operator Eutelsat is paying $550 million to buy part of OneWeb, the startup deploying a broadband network in low Earth orbit. The company is buying a 24% stake to give it similar governance rights to the British government and Indian telecom company Bharti Global, which bought OneWeb out of bankruptcy last year. Part of the investment will be funded by the $507 million that Eutelsat is getting from clearing C-band spectrum in the U.S. for terrestrial 5G networks. The Paris-based company operates a fleet of geostationary (GEO) satellites, but has been dipping its toes into LEO with a constellation called Eutelsat ELO, targeting the market for connecting Internet of Things (IoT) devices.  The first nanosatellite for this network, ELO Alpha, is slated to launch April 20 on a Vega rocket that is delayed following a launch failure in November. Buying a part of OneWeb’s LEO broadband constellation is a major strategy shift for Eut...