News & Events

A satellite Earth station. Photo: Optus Satellite [Via Satellite 08-24-2015] Australian satellite operator Optus Satellite has launched a new service for Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) businesses to ensure unhindered communications during terrestrial outages. Dubbed Optus Satellite Business Continuity, the solution supports critical communications over Optus’ satellite network rather than traditional terrestrial network infrastructure, effectively…

Artist’s rendition of an A2100 satellite. Photo: Lockheed Martin [Via Satellite 08-24-2015] Lockheed Martin has signed a contract with Orbital ATK for propellant and pressurant tanks for its modernized A2100 satellite platform. Under the new five-year contract, Orbital ATK will supply flight sets for A2100 satellites until March 2020. Flight sets consist of a hybrid…

An oil rig. Photo: Linsey G (Flickr) [Via Satellite 08-24-2015] SpeedCast International has won a significant satellite services agreement with an energy sector customer to provide communications in more than 20 countries. The multi-year, multi-million dollar contract is one of SpeedCast’s largest ever in the energy sector. The company has assigned a dedicated team to…

Netwec’s MDM6000 satellite modem. Photo: Newtec [Via Satellite 08-24-2015] Newtec together with Intelsat, have achieved a world first for the amount of throughput in a single transponder. During a demonstration at Intelsat’s Fuchsstadt teleport in Germany, engineers from both companies used the Newtec MDM6000 satellite modem with all digital built-in Bandwidth Cancellation (BWC) technology to set…

Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo: Jesus Alexander Reyes Sánchez [Via Satellite 08-21-2015] Direct to Home (DTH) broadcasting appears to be outpacing terrestrial broadcasts in Latin America, according to Juan Salleras, EVP and general manager at Encompass Digital Media Latin America. A mainstay of the satellite industry, DTH is growing in popularity as consumers distanced from densely…

Dmitry Medvedev visits the Amur Region. Photo: Government of the Russian Federation [Via Satellite 08-21-2015] Russia is pushing to have the first launch mission from the Vostochny Space Center conducted by December this year, according to an Aug. 20 statement from the Russian government. The government has created and approved a list of the minimal…

Arianespace’s VA225 Ariane 5 dual launch mission for Intelsat and Eutelsat. Photo: Arianespace [Via Satellite 08-21-2015] Arianespace launched two satellites on Aug. 20, one for Intelsat and one for Eutelsat, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. Eutelsat 8 West B, riding in the upper payload position, deployed first, 28 minutes into the flight. Intelsat 34 deployed…

A SANSA satellite dish. Photo: SANSA [Via Satellite 08-21-2015] Airbus Defence and Space has completed an imagery project covering all of South Africa in three months using the Spot 6 and Spot 7 twin satellites. A Direct Receiving Station (DRS) at the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) enabled coverage of the 1,221,000 square kilometer…

[Via Satellite 08-21-2015] E2v has launched a new grade of high-performance microprocessors based on the multicore processors from the Freescale QorIQ family. These processors produce tens of Gflop (1 billion floating-point operations per second) of performance, and are radiation hardened for space grade reliability. E2v’s quality checks include inspection procedures, screening, dynamic burn-in and qualification…

JAXA’s HTV 5/Kounotori 5 launch. Photo: JAXA [Via Satellite 08-20-2015] On Aug. 19 an H2B rocket from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) successfully launched the H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV) 5 to the International Space Station (ISS), delivering more than 4.5 tons in supplies including food and water, equipment, and…