General news on the satellite and space industry from around the web
Quartet Begins Race to Final, Orange Africa Cup of Nations Qualifiers. Photo: Confederation of African Football [Via Satellite 01-20-2015] Spacecom has been selected for broadcast services from its Amos 5 satellite at 17 degrees east for the bi-annual football championship competition, the Confederation of African Football‘s (CAF) Orange Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). The competition…
KVH Industries Chicago Ill. office. Photo: KVH [Via Satellite 01-16-2015] KVH Industries is hopeful that new High Throughput Satellite (HTS) systems coming online in 2015 will bring additional capacity for maritime applications, KVH President and CEO Martin Kits van Heyningen said Jan. 14 at the Needham Growth Conference in New York City. The company has…
A Gogo 2Ku dual link antenna. Photo: Gogo [Via Satellite 01-16-2015] Gogo has received regulatory approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to operate its next generation In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) technology – 2Ku. The FCC blanket approval enables Gogo to operate its 2Ku system on 1,000 aircraft and clears the path forward to launching…
A Gilat Teleport. Photo: Gilat. [Via Satellite 01-16-2015] O3b Networks, operator of a constellation of 12 High Throughput Satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), has certified Gilat Satellite Network’s SkyEdge 2 meoEdge high-performance MEO/O3b satellite terminal. During the certification process, O3b confirmed there was zero packet loss during handovers between satellites. Gilat’s meoEdge product is…
A Galileo IOV satellite. Photo: DLR [Via Satellite 01-16-2015] The United Kingdom Space Agency announced that U.K. Innovate is offering as much as $1.5 million in support of feasibility studies for new receiver technologies for Europe’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Galileo. Businesses can win a share of the funding for projects the agency expects…
An image taken by Meteor M2. Photo: Roscosmos [Via Satellite 01-16-2015] The Russian remote-sensing satellite Meteor M2, launched on July 8, 2014 aboard a Soyuz rocket with six other spacecraft, is close to finishing a lengthy series of in-orbit tests. According to TsENKI, the testing requires extra time due to the number and complexity of…
This annotated image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a bright feature interpreted as the United Kingdom’s Beagle 2 Lander, which was never heard from after its expected Dec. 25, 2003, landing. The image was taken by the orbiter’s HiRISE camera on Dec. 15, 2014.Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/University of Leicester [Via Satellite 01-16-2015] NASA’s Mars…
Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson and Qualcomm Executive Chairman Paul Jacobs are the initial investors in the OneWeb constellation and are part of the board of directors. Photo: Virgin [Via Satellite 01-15-2015] OneWeb, formerly known as WorldVu, announced today its intentions to launch a massive constellation of 648 small satellites to provide broadband and…
Artist rendering of the Al Yah 3 satellite. Photo: Yahsat [Via Satellite 01-15-2014] Orbital Sciences Corporation and UAE-based satellite operator Yahsat, have completed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for the Al Yah 3 spacecraft and payload. Al Yah 3, which is based on Orbital’s GEOStar 3 platform, is an all Ka-band, High Throughput Satellite (HTS)…
Pléiades Satellite Image – Salin-de-Giraud, France. Photo: CNES 2012, Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image [Via Satellite 01-15-2015] Airbus Defence and Space has partnered with the geo-information services company TerraNIS and IT consulting and services company Artal Technologies on furthering the use satellite imagery services by customers in France and worldwide. TerraNIS specializes in developing…