July 2015

New York City captured from Deimos 2 in February of 2015. Photo: UrtheCast [Via Satellite 07-16-2015] UrtheCast has announced the acquisition of Elecnor’s Earth observation business Deimos Imaging for an aggregate price of €76.4 million ($83 million). Through the purchase, UrtheCast gains ownership and operation of the Deimos 1 and Deimos 2 satellites as well…

Naypyidaw, Naypyidaw Capital Region, Myanmar: Uppatasanti Pagoda. Photo: DiverDave/Wikimedia Commons. [Via Satellite 07-16-2015] The Myanmar government is soon to pass a new broadcasting law designed to open up the country’s media industry and encourage the distribution of new services. The law is intended to demonstrate Myanmar’s commitment to infrastructure development, especially for telecommunications. “The broadcasting…

Sky Deutschland’s main building. Photo: Sky Deutschland [Via Satellite 07-16-2015] Sky Deutschland, a leading German and Austrian pay TV-provider, has secured additional capacity from SES for Ultra-HD broadcasts on Astra at 19.2 degrees east. Ultra-HD delivers four times the resolution of today’s HD TV, along with other improvements in visual quality. Europe is a frontrunner…

Rick Ambrose, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, speaks at the Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Headquarters opening in 2014. Photo: Lockheed Martin [Via Satellite 07-15-2015] Lockheed Martin Space Systems is looking to make more of an impact in the commercial satellite sector. While the company has had numerous successes in the U.S government arena…

BlackBridge satellites. Photo: SSTL [Via Satellite 07-15-2015] Planet Labs has entered a definitive agreement to purchase the BlackBridge geospatial companies, including the RapidEye suite of core offerings. Through the acquisition, Planet Labs will have access to more than 100 distribution channels and customers globally, as well as RapidEye’s six year-archive of global imagery, comprised of…

Canon EOS C500 with CN-E 30-300mm Cine lens. Photo: Tony Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons [Via Satellite 07-15-2015] Spanish satellite operator Hispasat has announced the Hispasat 4K International Festival, which the company is organizing in Spain. The competition is open to films produced in any country and genre, with a maximum duration of 20 minutes as long as…

Michael Butler, new non-executive chairman at BSS. Photo: BSS [Via Satellite 07-15-2015] Michael Butler, former Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Inmarsat, has joined Broadband Satellite Services (BSS) the parent company of Satcom Global and the AND Group, as non-executive chairman. Formerly president and COO of Inmarsat from 2000 to 2009, Butler as spent more than…

Thales Alenia Space’s representation of the Iridium NEXT constellation at the 2015 Paris Air Show. Photo: Photopointcom Thales [Via Satellite 07-15-2015] Iridium has successfully completed the Compact Antenna Test Range (CATR) evaluation of its Iridium NEXT satellites. The CATR testing is the simultaneous full power antenna testing of the main mission antenna, the feeder link…

[Via Satellite 07-15-2015] Pay-TV company Canal+ Group has deployed Thompson Video Networks’ ViBE EM4000 HD/SD encoder to power the migration of its entire Canalsat satellite offering to an all-HD delivery infrastructure based on the H.264 codec. The encoder works with Thompson Video Network’s NetProcessor multiplexer/video processor, Amethyst 3 high-density redundancy switch, and MediaFlex network management…

Spaceflight Network’s projected ground station map in 2017. Photo: Spaceflight Networks [Via Satellite 07-14-2015] Approximately one year after establishing its Spaceflight Networks division, Spaceflight Industries has teamed up with four other small satellite companies to double its number of active ground stations by the end of this year and to expand the range of spacecraft…