South America

Communications company Viasat announced the availability of reliable, high-speed, high-quality internet service for residential customers in Brazil. Viasat expects to be the only satellite internet service provider (ISP) that will be capable of making high-speed internet available in 100 percent of the country, upon completion of the residential launch rollout. …

The Amazonas Nexus, a more efficient, safer and more flexible latest generation satellite, will be launched in mid-2022. HISPASAT, the Spanish telecommunications satellite operator, has won a contract with Artel to embed the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center’s Pathfinder 2 mission on its Amazonas Nexus Satellite, which …

Local residents, businesses, government entities and the San Rafael de Leticia Hospital in the Colombian Amazonas are experiencing efficient, reliable and high-performing Internet connectivity as Colombian services provider SkyNet and SES Networks extended their partnership and increased network capacity within days to support COVID-19 mitigation efforts. SkyNet leveraged SES Networks’ …

The Brazilian Space Agency issued the following public call on 25 May 2020: This edict aims to identify companies, national or foreign, that are interested in carrying out suborbital and orbital launch operations using the Alcantara Space Center (CEA), as well as providing information on the contractual process, including licensing …

U.S. Space Command took another step in expanding its international space data sharing network; this time with the nation of Peru on 20 May 2020. Maj. Gen. Javier Tuesta Marquez, National Commission on Aerospace Research and Development (CONIDA), Republic of Peru, and Rear Adm. Marcus A. Hitchcock, USSPACECOM Director of …

On 28 April 2020 the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG), winner of the KiboCUBE programme 2017, run by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), saw their satellite deployed by JAXA from the International Space Station (ISS). The satellite – …

Telespazio Argentina, a subsidiary of Telespazio,  was awarded a contract,  following an international tender in Costa Rica to perform an urban and rural cadastral survey of the country. With the contract worth $20 million and lasting four years, Telespazio Argentina now leads this market segment in Latin America. Under the …

Elon Musk’s claim that the governmental and societal response to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic is an overreaction and “dumb” has caught up with him (again) as it was revealed that the 30 March 2020 scheduled launch of Argentina’s SAOCOM-1B remote sensing satellite by a SpaceX Falcon 9 satellite launch vehicle …

Venezuela’s only geostationary communications satellite, VENESAT-1 (also known as Simon Bolivar-1), has been tumbling in an unusable orbit since 13 March 2020 after it made a number of manoeuvres, presumably at the direction of its Venezuelan operator, according to Space News who spoke with commercial space situational awareness (SSA) providers ExoAnalytic Solutions …

Kleos Space S.A., a space-powered radio frequency reconnaissance data-as-a-service (DaaS) company, announced on 6 March 2020 that the Brazilian government agency Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Naturale Biocombustíveis (ANP) is to evaluate Kleos data at no cost for three months, commencing at the time the relevant data set is made …