With Embratel's Star One C1 satellite about to be deorbited as it's at the end of its life, the satellite operator is asking the FCC International Bureau to add its Brazil-flagged Star One C4 satellite to its permitted station list. In a petition filed Monday Embratel said C4 will operate at 70 degrees west as a Ku-band replacement satellite for Star One C2, which will relocate from 70 to 65 degrees west and replace C1. It said C4 offers fixed satellite services in the Ku band now throughout North, Central and South America, and grant of the petition will let the company offer satellite communications services in the band on routes to, from and within the U.S.

Radioastronomy isn't yet blind in the Ku band, but it's becoming increasingly inaccessible to radioastronomers due to increased satellite downlink traffic there, said Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Observatory Mission Assurance Head Tim Stevenson Thursday on a Satellite Industry Association webinar. Geostationary Ku-band traffic is transitory and “relatively benign,” but OneWeb and SpaceX low earth orbit (LEO) constellations are vastly noisier, he said. Other bands, like V, will surely face similar problems as LEO satellite traffic there grows, he said. Radioastronomy has some ITU protections, but it also uses bands well outside those protected zones, he said. Rather than counting on ITU or national regulations, the SKA and radioastronomy community "want[s] to work with you," Stevenson said. "We know you need to service customers." SKA Spectrum Manager Federico Di Vruno said the scale of the problem makes some mitigation steps that have been used in the past unworkable. He said the aim is to find a way to lower the power flux density over SKA's radio quiet zones in Australia and South Africa. The two SKA telescopes are to be built by 2028.

AST is expanding its U.S. manufacturing facilities to produce the SpaceMobile satellite constellation, and the FCC should allow terrestrial spectrum holders to provide 5G service using that constellation under the agency's flexible use doctrine, CEO Abel Avellan urged FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington. That's per an International Bureau filing Wednesday.

Getting action on a terrestrial supplement or alternative to GPS requires more advocacy by the Department of Homeland Security about the danger of going without one, plus pilot programs testing various technologies rather than waiting to settle on one, said George Washington University Space Policy Institute Director Scott Pace Wednesday on a Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation/Domestic Preparedness Journal webinar. The government doesn't know which tech approach will work but should experiment with different ones and “see who can move quickly,” he said. Pace said technologies ranging from UHF to 5G could be employed in a backup system, but market ability to turn out millions of receivers also has to be considered in deciding which to choose. Speakers criticized a lack of government action. "There's a lot of understanding of what the issues are, a lot of kvetching and hand-wringing," said former Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary Greg Winfree, now director of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Pace said lack of progress over the three previous presidential administrations shows a critical U.S. weakness in planning, budgeting and acquisition. “It's not a question of affordability [or] policy needs. We can't execute,” he said. Many speakers also said this week's anti-satellite missile test by Russia (see 2111160063) underlines the need to supplement GPS. The anti-satellite exercise was part technical test and part Moscow saber rattling, said Center for the National Interest Director of Studies George Beebe. He said U.S. reliance on GPS is one of the nation's key strategic weaknesses. Beyond such potential deliberate threats to GPS, it faces unintentional environmental ones such as interference from use of nearby spectrum, Pace said. "We need to be stewards of the entire noise floor," he said. Winfree said any GPS supplement or alternative needs to be shepherded by the federal government rather than left to the private sector. He likened it to the variety of electric car charging technologies and plugs in the market: “We would wind up with a Tower of Babel.”

"No one owns space. And no one should intentionally make it more difficult to use," FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington said Tuesday, condemning Russia's test Monday of an anti-satellite missile and the resulting orbital debris. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the test created more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and will likely result in hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces.

Commercial space operators including Eutelsat, Arianespace, Planet and Astroscale are among inaugural members of the Net Zero Space initiative aimed at tackling space debris issues. Net Zero was announced Friday at the Paris Peace Forum. The coalition called for "avoiding further generation of hazardous space debris [and] remediating existing hazardous space debris," with a goal of "achieving sustainable use of outer space for the benefit of all humankind by 2030." Companies announcing their membership laid out specifics toward those goals. Eutelsat cited successful deorbit of 95% of its satellites since the 2005 adoption of its space debris mitigation plan.

Intelsat Phase I certification of accelerated C-band relocation was validated, the FCC Wireless Bureau ordered Friday. The bureau said the new C-band licensees will now pay their portion of the Phase I accelerated relocation payment to the relocation payment clearinghouse, with funds to be dispersed to the satellite operator.

SpaceX's Starlink broadband constellation, with 1,800 satellites launched, is serving about 140,000 users in more than 20 countries, and has taken 750,000 orders or deposits worldwide, company officials told FCC International Bureau Chief Tom Sullivan, per a filing last week. Its planned second-generation constellation of about 30,000 satellites would have lower latency and more backhaul capacity, SpaceX said. All the planned satellites would reenter the atmosphere in less than four years, it said.

Small satellite-based voice service providers face a big challenge in implementing Stir/Shaken, the Satellite Industry Association said Friday in FCC docket 20-68. It urged an indefinite extension of the deadline for small VSPs to comply with the Stir/Shaken mandate "given the challenging circumstances facing small satellite VSPs, combined with their unique economic, operational, and technical characteristics." SIA said they can't authenticate calls under the standard due to huge reliance on non-North American numbering plan resources for caller ID purposes.

EchoStar's HughesNet satellite broadband service ended the company's most-recent quarter with 1.51 million subscribers in the U.S. and Latin America, down 32,000 from the previous quarter, with ongoing capacity constraints, Hughes Network Systems President Pradman Kaul said Tuesday as EchoStar announced its Q3 2021 results. EchoStar Satellite Services President Anders Johnson said its Jupiter 3 broadband satellite will launch in the second half of 2022. He said EchoStar and Dish Network are jointly evaluating how some Dish U.S. licenses for AWS-4 and S-band spectrum might be used in meshing EchoStar's services internationally with Dish's planned U.S. terrestrial network. EchoStar said total revenue for the quarter was $504.7 million, up $31.2 million year over year.