Satcoms

Amazon announced it signed launch service contracts with three commercial launch companies, ArianeSpace, Blue Origin and ULA (United Launch Alliance) for 83 launches altogether over a five year period.  Arianespace will perform 18 Ariane 6 launches for Amazon’s Project Kuiper over a period of three years under the contract.

In that Space Café Germany Dr.-Ing. Ernst Pfeiffer, CEO of HPS High-Performance Space Structure Systems GmbH and spokesman of the German SME in Space Association, talked with our guest moderator Markus Mooslechner, Executive Producer and Author at Terra Mater Studios and Host of the Space Café Podcasts about SME's in the German Space(politics) - an orientation.

Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES, ordered a software-defined geostationary satellite from Thales Alenia Space to extend its connectivity services across Europe, Asia and Africa, SES said. SES-26 is the third and final satellite the company has ordered from Thales Alenia based on their three-satellite contract.

Washington-based mobile connectivity company Kymeta, has signed a distribution partner agreement with OneWeb to offer satellite broadband services around the globe, Kymeta said. The agreement enables Kymeta to resell OneWeb services to government and commercial customers globally.

PSN Group (Pasifik Satelit Nusantara) has entered into contracts to build the Nusantara Lima Satellite with a planned launch in 2023 to augment the capacity of SATRIA-1, the company said. These two very high throughput satellites will make PSN one of the biggest satellite capacity providers in Asia, according to the firm. Its 330 Gbps service will cover Indonesia and its surrounding areas.

Defense products and technologies provider Leonardo DRS, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Global Enterprise Solutions (GES) business to connectivity provider SES, for US $450 million. The transaction has already been approved by the board of directors of both companies. 

Low Earth orbit satellite communications company OneWeb, announced it entered into an agreement with SpaceX to resume OneWeb’s satellite launch programme. The terms of the agreement are confidential. The first launch is scheduled for this year, adding to OneWeb’s 428-satellite in-orbit constellation, which makes up 66% of the fleet.

Germany based Rivada Space Networks, a new company launching a constellation of 600 Ka-band low Earth orbit communications satellites, will be debuting the company’s system at Satellite 2022 in Washington DC.  Rivada Space was founded by U.S. wireless communications innovator Rivada Networks.

Last weekend I received a link to the presentation that Steve Collar (CEO of SES) gave during GovSatCom22 in Luxemburg late last month. Steve is someone I genuinely respect, and we go back a long time. I fondly remember working with him on a DVB-RCS project back in 2003 that we thought was going to be critically important for the future of our industry,

Space4Impact, EPFL’s Space Center eSpace, E2MC Ventures, and Space Innovation joined forces to launch an online course on the New Space Economy, hosted on edX, Space4Impact announced. The program is already available as a free EPFLx course. There are over 30 video lectures accessible for those who want to learn.