BREMEN, Germany – Capella Space won a U.S. Air Force contract to adapt its commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for military applications. Capella won the $750,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 contract for its presentation at Air Force Space Pitch Day, a competition in San Francisco in early November to identify commercial technology
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BREMEN, Germany — FCC Chairman Ajit Pai informed Congress Nov. 18 that the agency will run a public auction of C-band spectrum instead of allowing a consortium of satellite operators to sell it directly to 5G wireless operators. Satellite operators Intelsat, SES and Telesat, acting as the C-Band Alliance, have been lobbying the Federal Communications
The 10-year contract is for operations and support of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency, Milstar and Defense Satellite Communications System constellations. WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $3.3 billion contract for support services on classified military communications satellites, the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center announced Nov. 15. The 10-year indefinite-delivery
WASHINGTON — The Senate Commerce Committee approved Nov. 13 a NASA authorization bill introduced a week earlier to extend the life of the International Space Station and support other agency programs. The committee approved, on a voice vote, the NASA Authorization Act of 2019. That bill, S.2800, was introduced Nov. 6 by a bipartisan group
WASHINGTON — SpaceX completed its second launch of 60 Starlink satellites Nov. 11, making its own system the largest commercial telecommunications satellite constellation in orbit. SpaceX launched the satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket at 9:56 a.m. Eastern, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The satellites separated just over one hour later into a
WASHINGTON — Telesat Canada will likely choose the winner of a now three-way race to build its low Earth orbit broadband constellation in the first few months of 2020 instead of this year, CEO Dan Goldberg said Nov. 5. Goldberg, in an earnings call, said Telesat still anticipates having 200 satellites orbiting in 2022 and
DIU received 25 proposals for the Dismounted Assured PNT System WASHINGTON — The Defense Innovation Unit’s Boston office is reviewing vendor proposals for handheld navigation devices that don’t rely on Global Positioning System satellite signals. They would be used by U.S. Army soldiers in future military conflicts when they expect GPS signals to be disrupted.
WASHINGTON — Finding international consensus on deployment milestones for constellations of non-geosynchronous satellites is a top space-related priority for the U.S. delegation attending the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference, officials said Nov. 1. Grace Koh, the ambassador leading the U.S. delegation at WRC-19 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, this month, said there are several space-related topics the
WASHINGTON — Top officials with the European Space Agency remain confident that they will be able to resolve the parachute problems that threaten to delay next summer’s launch of the ExoMars 2020 rover mission. In two high-altitude tests earlier this year, parachutes intended to slow down the ExoMars 2020 lander suffered tears in their canopies.
GAO said the Air Force Space C2 program requires more oversight from the Defense Department. WASHINGTON — The Government Accountability Office in a new report gave low marks to the Air Force’s Space Command and Control program, a long troubled effort to provide commanders with better tools to monitor what is happening in space. The