Commercial space operators need to consider the ethical and fiduciary issues of how having the DOD as a customer could make them targets in a space conflict, Even Rogers, CEO of space intelligence startup True Anomaly, said Wednesday on a Hudson Institute panel. The Russia-Ukraine war highlighted how commercial operators become targets when they support DOD, and they easily could be targeted before DOD or intelligence community space assets since it's unclear if the U.S. would defend commercial providers in space, he said. Redwire Executive Vice President-National Security Space Dean Bellamy said artificial stovepipes in space traffic management, like DOD vs. Commerce, are breaking down as the agencies are working better among themselves, with commercial operators and allies. He said that increased collaboration between Commerce and the Space Force resulted in better space traffic management and safety in space.
New Viasat withdrew subsidiary Inmarsat's 2021 petition seeking U.S. market access for its planned V-band Orchestra constellation (see 2111030008), it said Tuesday in docket 22-153.
Activations of the Iridium-enabled Android emergency messaging service via Qualcomm's Snapdragon Satellite platform likely won't come until 2024, Iridium CEO Matt Desch said Tuesday as the company announced its Q2 earnings. The Iridium service has done its qualification work with Qualcomm, but there's integration work to be done by smartphone makers, he said. The Iridium service will start with emergency SOS service, then expand to real-time messaging, and the Apple/Globalstar service likely will do the same, he said. He said the company sees notable opportunities in L-band services such as connectivity services for small aircraft, helicopters and drones.
HawkEye 360, with its constellation licensed to operate from 500 km to 615 km, asked the FCC Space Bureau to amend that operational altitude to 400 km-615 km, extending its operation capabilities as their orbits decay. In an application Monday, the company said its Cluster 4 satellites are operating at an orbital altitude of about 477 km due to propulsion system failures and increased solar activity.
The FCC effectively gave first Ka-/Ku-band processing round applicants a seven-year sunset of their interference projections by backdating it to 2020 for first-round operators, OneWeb said Friday in a docket 21-456 petition for partial reconsideration. With many second processing round grants still pending, first-round operators would ultimately get little to no protection interference from second-round grantees after the latter are fully deployed, it said. That "undermines the Commission’s rationale that First Round operators should be ensured some period of time during which they will be protected from second-round systems even after the latter have deployed and offered service." OneWeb said, asking the agency to reconsider the sunset provision in its non-geostationary orbit satellite spectrum sharing order approved in April (see 2304200039).
Hyped for years, shipments of flat-panel satellite antennas are ratcheting up and manufacturers are moving from design and development to being production-ready, Valour Consultancy said Friday, forecasting a total of 100,000 units being shipped by year's end for connectivity applications like aviation, maritime and land mobility. It said non-geostationary orbit satellite capacity growth will drive antenna demand.
Existing power flux density restrictions in the 17.8-18.3 GHz will address concerns fixed service (FS) operators have about allocating the 17 GHz band to fixed satellite service, representatives of Amazon's Kuiper told FCC Space Bureau staffers per a docket 20-330 filing Friday. Non-geostationary orbit FSS already has 17 GHz band access in Europe and Africa and interference-avoidance measures used in adjacent bands should do the same in the 17 GHz band and allow NGSO FSS operators to coexist with other authorized users in the band, they said. Amazon said FS operations in the 17.7-17.8 GHz band will be less likely to get interference than in the adjacent 17.8-18.3 GHz band because the 17 GHz band is less used by FS. It said its own dynamic interference simulations show aggregate interference to FS system receive antennas being well below ITU recommendations.
Geostationary orbit satellite startup Astranis' Arcturus satellite, launched in April to bring broadband to Alaska, "abruptly experienced an anomaly" with its solar array drive assembly, CEO John Gedmark tweeted Friday. As a result, it can't maintain full power constantly and the company will have to delay starting service in Alaska while repurposing the satellite for secondary missions, Gedmark said. The faulty component came from a contractor, and all Astranis-designed hardware "works perfectly," he said. Astranis knows "exactly how to quickly solve this issue on future spacecraft that are in production as we speak," he added. The Astranis problems, following technical problems with Viasat's ViaSat-3 Americas satellite (see 2307130003), are "tough blows for the industry," Northern Sky Research analyst Dallas Kasaboski tweeted Friday. "Thankfully, manufacturing is increasing in responsiveness, allowing replacements to be more easily deployed," he said. "Also acts as evidence supporting in-orbit servicing one day."
New Viasat counter-arguments to SpaceX seeking rescinding the order allowing Viasat to acquire Inmarsat's authorizations (see 2307060019) rely on "misconceived arguments and misapplication of case law," SpaceX said Thursday in a docket 22-153 reply. It said Viasat's examples of past cases are all focused on competition-related allegations rather than license compliance.
Capella Space hopes to launch two more earth exploration satellite service satellites, Arcadia-3 and -4, in Q4 of this year and Q1 2024 respectively, it told the FCC Space Bureau Tuesday in an application to launch the two. The satellites would join nine of its EESS satellites already in orbit, Capella said. It said it signed a coordination agreement with NASA, the Air Force and other federal agencies for its X-band downlinks to ensure Capella operations don't interfere with the federal systems.