| | | | |  Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is still sifting through industry ideas for opening satellite-dominated C-band spectrum to terrestrial telecommunications, and while not yet reaching a conclusion, considers Intel and Intelsat's proposed spectrum clearing plan a positive step.
The agency has evaluated comments industry submitted over the summer, and is now "trying to figure out what the best mechanism is for moving forward," FCC commissioner Michael O'Rielly said Oct. 13 at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference here. "I'm trying to figure out what's the best mechanism to provide mobile service in this band, whether it be protection of incumbent uses in earth stations, or whether it be market mechanisms, and when I see Intel coordinate and combine with Intelsat, a large satellite provider, or at least today, I think that that's very beneficial and provides one mechanism to look at closely," O'Rielly said. | | |  Debra Werner, SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), a Pentagon team charged with finding cutting-edge technologies to solve pressing national security problems, is not likely to abandon efforts to obtain radar data and analysis from commercial firms in spite of a recent setback.
Bloomberg reported Oct. 6 that House and Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittees opposed the Pentagon's plan to transfer $50 million to the DIUx campaign to develop prototype commercial microsatellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology and deep-learning analytics. DIUx did not provide any comment at press time, but observers in Washington said the Pentagon is exploring other funding sources for the effort to obtain a persistent capability to obtain imagery in all weather conditions, day and night and to derive useful insight from the observations. | | |  Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — Global fleet operator Eutelsat is buying Noorsat, a large satellite broadcaster that relied mostly on Eutelsat capacity to beam television channels across the Middle East.
The $75 million purchase fits what Eutelsat described as a "broader strategy of streamlining distribution within selected core video neighbourhoods where it can create value," according to an Oct. 13 statement. Eutelsat expects to generate $15 million in annualized revenues from Noorsat's services that already rely on Eutelsat capacity. | | | Caleb Henry, MOSCOW — International Launch Services expects its new, scaled-down variant of Proton-M to be a more direct competitor with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket than the current heavy-lift version ILS has used for decades. Kirk Pysher, president of ILS, said the company is banking on Proton Medium as the company's next step — a vehicle more important to the commercial sector than Angara 5, Russia's modular, next-generation launcher, which ILS has commercial rights to like Proton. Angara 5 is optimized for heavyweight spacecraft as a direct replacement for Proton-M starting in 2025, but would likely be applicable for just one to two missions per year, Pysher said, and that launch rate would not be enough to constitute a steady business. "We need to target something between $65 [million] and $55 million as the price point, and the Angara 5 vehicle will not be able to do that," Pysher told SpaceNews. "That is why it is not really the right fit for the current commercial market as we see it today. We need that family of vehicles that the variants address." | |  | - Winners will be featured in the Dec. 18 issue of SpaceNews.
- We seek to honor headline-grabbing breakthroughs as well as outside-the-limelight innovations that may have escaped our attention.
| | | Jeff Foust, WASHINGTON — A shift in focus in NASA's exploration plans to the moon won't have an immediate effect on planning for the first flight of the agency's Space Launch System rocket, now expected no sooner than late 2019. At the Oct. 5 inaugural meeting of the reconstituted National Space Council, Vice President Mike Pence announced that NASA would be charged with developing plans for a human return to the moon as a stepping stone for later missions to Mars. "We will return American astronauts to the moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond," Pence said at the meeting at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center. He directed NASA to develop a plan within 45 days to carry out that revised policy. | | | Sandra Erwin, WASHINGTON — Electronics in small packages can do big things in space. That sort of sums up the thinking behind defense industry giant Lockheed Martin's move to invest in commercial companies that build tiny satellites and sensors, and develop data-crunching software. The Orion deep-space exploration vehicle that Lockheed Martin is building for NASA will have miniature infrared focal plane arrays to, one day, map the surface of the moon. These are the some of the technologies that keep getting cheaper and better thanks to commercial innovations, said Keoki Jackson, Lockheed Martin's chief technology officer who previously ran many of the company's military space programs. "We are happy to have access to low-cost satellite technology," Jackson told reporters Oct. 11. | | | Debra Werner, SAN FRANCISCO — DigitalGlobe's selection of Raytheon Space Systems to manufacture high-resolution imagers for the WorldView Legion constellation shows Raytheon is making headway in its effort to use expertise honed through decades of government work to attract commercial customers. 'We're leveraging 45 years of extensive global experience in space imaging to provide DigitalGlobe with an unmatched view of the world from space," Rick Yuse, Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems president, said in a statement. Prior to the WorldView Legion contract announced Oct. 10, Raytheon Space Systems worked exclusively under government contracts. In recent years, however, the firm has identified promising commercial activities to pursue as it seeks to diversify its business and gain a foothold in the burgeoning commercial Earth imagery business. | | | Sandra Erwin, WASHINGTON — A new market for super high-speed weapons is fueling investments in rocket engine technologies as companies seek to gain an edge. The industry foresees a demand for advanced rocket engines, particularly if the U.S. military moves to acquire revolutionary missiles that fly at hypersonic speeds. The Pentagon expects to invest $2 billion over the next five years in high-speed weapons including lasers and hypersonic missiles that travel at five times the speed of sound. The future of missiles and propulsion technology is about going "further and faster," Pat Nolan, vice president of Orbital ATK, told SpaceNews at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference. | | | Jeff Foust, WASHINGTON — While NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) have restarted production of a plutonium isotope used to power some space missions, a new report warns of challenges that could threaten its long-term supply. The Oct. 4 report by the Government Accountability Office, tied to a House space subcommittee hearing on the subject, said that while there is sufficient plutonium-238 in stockpiles now for missions planned through the mid-2020s, scaling up production of the isotope faces a number of technical issues. "DOE is making progress towards producing new plutonium-238," said Shelby Oakley, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the GAO, in testimony at the hearing. "However, DOE faces challenges in hiring and training the necessary workforce, perfecting and scaling up chemical processing, and ensuring the availability of reactors that must be addressed or its ability to meet NASA's needs could be jeopardized." | | | Tereza Pultarova, LONDON — Eutelsat's newest satellite reached its target position in the geostationary orbit this week only four months after its launch, setting an industry record for the fastest all electric orbit-raising. Eutelsat-172b was launched June 1 along with Viast-2 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. The satellite's builder Airbus said the record time had been achieved thanks to a set of innovations including a pair of deployable robotic arms that orientate the satellite's Hall thrusters allowing better control of the thrust direction and attitude during different phases of the mission. | | | Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — Turkish telecommunications satellite operator Turksat has selected Airbus Defence and Space for the construction of two long-awaited geostationary satellites. Ahmet Arslan, Turkey's minister of transport, maritime and communications, told the country's state-run media outlet the Anadolu Agency Oct. 6 that contract negotiations are underway with Airbus for Turksat 5A and Turksat 5B, with discussions expected to conclude by the end of the month. Airbus' offer bested those of California-based Space Systems Loral and Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Electric, the latter of which built Turksat's two most recent satellites Turksat 4A and 4B. | | | Sandra Erwin, WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is coming to grips with the possibility that Congress will pass a law to create a new military service dedicated to space. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Air Force leaders oppose the measure, but regardless of the final legislative outcome, there is a growing recognition that military space issues demand more attention in the building, said Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. "We had a meeting on space just this morning," Lord said Oct. 11 at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference. "There is a lot of debate on space going on right now," she said. "We have a lot of needs there, there's a lot of opportunity." | | | Caleb Henry, WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army's experimental Kestrel Eye is scheduled to deploy Oct. 24 from the International Space Station to begin a two-year mission testing how the small satellite can speed the delivery of time-sensitive overhead imagery to soldiers on the ground, according to a senior Army official. The mission will influence whether the Army pushes ahead with its own smallsat Earth-observation constellation independent of what commercial operators are doing. Thomas Webber, director of Army Space and Missile Defense Command's Technical Center, told SpaceNews the speed that soldiers can obtain satellite imagery today is substantially slower than desired. | | | | | | |
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