Tag Archives: Satellite Broadband

The Russian state space corporation, Roscosmos, has announced its intention to build a constellation of satellites called Marathon to serve the expanding Internet of Things (IoT) market, as part of its Sphere satellite system.

Shetland Space Centre (SSC) has joined forces with telecom experts in the neighbouring Faroe Islands, forming a unique international partnership to drive forward space industry developments in the two island groups and beyond.

KT Sat, South Korea’s only commercial satellite communications company, has announced that it has created a working group to examine the integration of emerging technologies into its commercial offerings, to include blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT).

As climate change makes the Arctic region, also known as the High North, more navigable for conventional shipping and open to natural resource exploitation, so geopolitical competition between Arctic countries such as Canada, Russia, United States, and Scandinavian countries such as Norway intensifies.

The first of 320 satellites in the Chinese Hongyan low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites communications mega-constellation is expected to be launched by the end of 2018 on board a Long March-2D satellite launch vehicle, according to reporting by Andrew Jones in the GBTimes.

It has been a busy few weeks in the Middle Eastern satellite and space sector, with developments and activities taking place from Morocco to Iran, and all points in between. The following is a roundup of the regional space and satellite news that was not previously covered in-depth by SpaceWatch.MiddleEast.

SpaceX successfully launched the Es’hail-2 satellite for Qatar’s Es’hailsat on Thursday, 15 November 2018, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, United States. Liftoff occurred at 3:46 p.m. EST, or 20:46 UTC, and the satellite was deployed to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) about 32 minutes after launch.

MzansiSat, a New Space satellite broadband company located in Stellenbosch, South Africa, is looking to launch and operate its own Geostationary orbit communications satellite, to be called MzansiSat-1, by 2022 in order to provide low-cost satellite broadband Internet across Africa in what its Chief Operating Officer, Victor Stephanopoli, calls a "patchy" telecommunications sector on the continent.

Australian New Space start-up Myriota, which focuses on providing satellite connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT), is partnering with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) to deploy marine buoys called drifters that are fitted with satellite-connected IoT sensors in order to track currents, sea surface water temperature, and barometric pressure of the ocean in real-time.

IEC Telecom and two of its long-standing strategic partners, UAE's Yahsat and its subsidiary Thuraya, are offering new products, services, and connectivity services at the 2018 Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC).