Telesat has contracted with SpaceX for 14 Falcon 9 launches for Telesat's Lightspeed low earth orbit constellation, the two said Monday. Each will carry up to 18 Lightspeed satellites to LEO, they said. The launches will start in 2025, with Lightspeed to begin providing global service in 2027, they said.

Before SpaceX resumes launches of its Starship Super Heavy rocket at its Boca Chica, Texas, launch site, the company must take 63 corrective actions, the FAA said Friday, announcing it concluded its investigation into the rocket's April explosion during testing. The agency said SpaceX also must get a license modification that addresses safety and environmental requirements before another Starship launch. CEO Elon Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, last week that Starship was "ready to launch" and awaiting FAA approval.

Space startups and entrepreneurs often are unaware of the regulations and requirements pertinent to their businesses, like export control, or that the regulatory process can be expensive, said Aegis Space Law lawyer Bailey Reichelt Wednesday at an Association of Commercial Space Professionals event. The seminar went over basics of space law regulation, such as relevant agencies and legislation, plus the processes, such as recommendations for particular staffers to contact at FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. Space consultant Caryn Schenewerk said the FAA is facing a resource challenge, with insufficient staffing to handle all the applications. She said it also could use improved processes, and a ticket system where an applicant can see where it is in the queue and get feedback. She said one FAA staffing challenge is that it's in a hiring battle with the private sector since there's strong demand by commercial space companies.

Spectrum Five CEO David Wilson's claims about its dropping a complaint against Intelsat (see 2308310024) dodge lender BIU's central points, BIU said Wednesday in docket 20-399. He doesn't explain what BIU's power of attorney agreement with SF conveys, it said, saying "if it does not convey the right to protect BIU’s investment, it is useless." BIU said the rights in question are its "only collateral for economic interests worth hundreds of millions of dollars" and Wilson's equity in SF "is subsidiary to the holders of debt in BIU." "Most telling of all" is that Wilson doesn't explain why he withdrew the Intelsat petition, it said. Wilson didn't comment. SF's 2020 complaint said it had senior priority rights to operate at 95 degrees west, but the two Intelsat satellites there were using power levels twice as high as ITU allows (see 2012010057).

Appropriate values for measuring long- and short-term interference thresholds are sorely needed, satellite operators said in docked 21-456 reply comments posted Wednesday. There continued to be disagreements about the use of band splitting once interference protections sunset (see 2308080051). The replies were for the non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) Further NPRM adopted in April (see 2304200039). Given the general industry consensus on such issues as assessing short-term interference based on absolute change in link availability rather than a relative change in unavailability, the agency's next step should be getting input and technical analysis to determine objective link availability and degraded throughput values, SpaceX said. Compatibility demonstrations should be needed only if coordination discussions fail to result in an agreement, O3b said. It urged the agency to require compatibility analysis across various latitudes and consider different rain conditions to prevent cherry-picking of locations that could distort interference calculations. The record shows support for opting for an absolute decrease in unavailability metric for short-term interference, but there's no consensus on the appropriate values for the long- and short-term interference thresholds, Intelsat said. It said there's no persuasive justification for the commission to adopt an aggregate interference cap or a post-sunset interference protection regime beyond what already is in its rules. Telesat also urged more study before determining a short-term standard for unavailability. It said the agency "should avoid falling into the trap" of delaying operations of a later-round applicant's system when there's no coordination agreement, particularly when an earlier-round applicant hasn't fully engaged in coordination efforts. Noting support in the record for ensuring operators of poorly designed systems aren't inadvertently rewarded, Viasat said the agency can push efficient spectrum use by taking another look at its band-splitting mechanism, as that incentivizes deployment of systems using spectrum inefficiently. Turning to band splitting after the sunset of interference protections could mean service disruptions, said OneWeb. NGSO systems that aren't fully deployed by the sunset date shouldn't be allowed to operate under default spectrum splitting procedures at least until they have completed deployment, it said. Supporting band splitting, Amazon's Kuiper said the prospect of this equal status promotes coordination. Backing a degraded throughput methodology, Mangata said the FCC should allow operators to use publicly available data such as in their applications but not require the analysis be based on information coming from the coordination process. That analysis should account for only deployed satellites, with there being an option to submit an analysis looking at future deployments of earlier-round systems or a new showing once there has been deployment of that earlier round, it said.

AST SpaceMobile and SpaceX are seeking FCC Space Bureau action on pending mobile supplemental coverage from space applications. With AST's planned launch in Q1 2024 of its first commercial satellites, the FCC needs to expedite approval of the company's pending V-band feeder link authority to facility gateway siting and licensing, company officials told Space Bureau staffers, per a filing posted Tuesday docket 23-65. It also urged putting its pending supplemental coverage from space application (see 2307180001) on public notice. SpaceX said in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 23-135 that it urged action on its pending SCS application (see 2302080001).

The FCC Space Bureau signed off on Odyssey SpaceWorks' non-geostationary orbit satellite mission scheduled for launch later this year (see 2306270012) and gave partial approval and partial deferral to Planet Labs' proposed license modification to its Pelican constellation (see 2204220001), said a notice in Friday's Daily Digest.

The FCC Space Bureau imposed some of the SpaceX-sought conditions in Iceye's proposed second tranche of satellites (see 2304260068). In an order in Friday's Daily Digest, the bureau required Iceye to report any loss of control of a second-tranche satellite at altitudes about 350 km -- an altitude where the satellites still should have maneuvering capability using propulsion. It also ordered Iceye to provide information on potential conjunction events, especially with respect to difficulties encountered in collision avoidance.

Advanced Space's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (Capstone) satellite has operated successfully for close to 10 months in orbit around the moon, Advanced blogged Wednesday. During that time, Capstone demonstrated spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation services that allow future spacecraft to determine their location relative to the moon without relying exclusively on tracking from Earth; and explored using one-way navigation through an onboard atomic clock, Advanced said.

KDDI will partner with SpaceX on providing mobile supplemental coverage from space (SCS) service starting as early as 2024, the Japanese telco said Wednesday. It said the SCS service, using SpaceX's Starlink satellites and KDDI wireless spectrum, will start with SMS texting and eventually expand to voice and data services. KDDI said almost all existing smartphones on its network will be compatible with the new service since it will use the devices' existing radio services.