Satcoms

After the failure of Angosat-1 shortly after its launch late last year, Angola is again partnering with Russia to build and launch Angosat-2 by 2020. Angola’s first communications satellite, Angosat-1, failed shortly after reaching orbit. It was launched in December 2017 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on board a Zenit 3F rocket. Russia’s RSC Energia, a subsidiary of the state-run space industry player Roscosmos, built the satellite.

In September 2015, more than 150 world leaders met at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit to adopt the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Building on the successes of the original 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), this new agenda officially came into force on January 1, 2016 and includes an ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to support economic growth, improve social inclusion, and advance environmental protection.

International shipping exhibition, Posidonia, provided the perfect backdrop for the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between global mobile satellite service provider, Inmarsat and the Hellenic Space Agency (HSA).

The Sultanate of Oman has announced that it intends to build two satellites and then have them launched by the end of 2019, according to the Omani minister of transport and communications, Dr. Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Salim al Futaisi.

On 30 March 2018, a meeting of the Ukrainian State Space Agency Collegium was held in the city of Dnipro. During the meeting, the results of the work of enterprises and institutions of the Ukrainian space industry for 2017 were summed up and priority directions of work for the forthcoming period were determined.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted U.S.-Singaporean New Space company Audacy a licence for the first commercial inter-satellite relay network, and the implications of this are transformational for space communications as LEO operators, for the first time, can be in constant contact with their satellites.

South Korean satellite operator KT Sat is now poised to provide near-global maritime and inflight connectivity through its new satellites and expanded teleport, in what is becoming an increasingly crowded market.

SES’s Satellite Monitor study suggests that satellites are playing a critical role in bridging the digital divide in Africa, with SES providing 2.7 million Ugandans with satellite television.

The maritime sector of today is more connected than ever before. Vessels of all kinds have effectively become floating offices where the same level of connectivity is in demand at sea as on the shore. Communications on board assist shipping fleet owners, cruise ships and also owners of smaller vessels and yachts to become more operationally efficient and to keep both crew and passengers happy by enabling them to access their mobile devices even whilst away at sea.

SES announced that it has successfully launched SES-12 to serve the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions, increasing the capacity to provide connectivity for mobile, video, fixed data and government customers.