Finance

The re-election of U.S. President Barack Obama for a second four-year term in a bitterly polarized political climate and era of crisis-level budget deficits can fairly be seen to promise a continuation of the status quo in U.S. Government space policy. That policy was led by the Obama Administration’s fiscal year 2011 budget and the...

[Satellite TODAY 12-27-12] SpaceX has entered into a launch services agreement with satellite messaging services provider Orbcomm to launch up to 18 Orbcomm second-generation commercial communications satellites currently being constructed by Sierra Nevada into low-Earth-orbit using the Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX confirmed Dec. 27.    The new agreement is worth $42.6 million, excluding any optional...

Click on the image to watch the video of the third Grasshopper flight. The rocket rose 131 feet for 29-seconds. Image credit: SpaceX [Satellite TODAY 12-26-12] SpaceX’s vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (VTVL), Grasshopper, completed a test flight conducted earlier this month at the company’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas, during which the vehicle...

[Satellite TODAY 12-19-12] Satellite manufacturer Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) and Sea Launch have confirmed that the Independent Oversight Board (IOB) formed to investigate the solar array deployment anomaly following launch of Intelsat-19 (IS-19) in the spring of 2012 has successfully reached a unanimous conclusion.    The IOB concluded that, “the anomaly occurred before the spacecraft separated...

Tags: Satellite Launch, VSAT, Azerbaijan, Arianespace, Orbital Sciences Corp. Publication: Trend.az Publication Date: 12/03/2012 Artist’s impression of Azerspace -1. Image credit: Orbital Sciences Corp. Azerbaijan has moved a step losing to having its own space capability. Azerbaijan’s first satellite, Azerspace-1 is undergoing final testing ahead of launch next year. Testing will be completed this week. The satellite is likely...

Tags: South Korea, Rocket Launch Publication: CNN.com Publication Date: 11/29/2012 This photo provided by Korea Aerospace Research Institute on October 24, 2012 shows the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-I (KSLV-I) on its launch pad at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, 350 km south of Seoul. Image credit: AFP PHOTO/Korea Aerospace Research Institute. South Korea’s space ambitions...

With a series of new developments in electric-propulsion, high-throughput and Ka-band satellites as well as industry consolidation, 2012 has been quite a year in the satellite industry. There have been many talking points among industry watchers. But, what did key industry executives see as the main announcements this year? In a special year-end roundtable, Via...

[Satellite News 11-20-12] So far in 2012, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) has authorized almost a billion-and-a-half dollars in satellite transactions. Yesterday, the Ex-Im Bank added to its contribution to the industry’s growth by authorizing two transactions totaling $461 million in order to underwrite the export of American-made satellites to Hong...

As I mentioned in the previous OilComm E-daily, attendees at the 2012 OilComm conference in Houston witnessed several transformations of the show compared to last year. One of those changes was the inclusion of an inland remote communications track. Previous shows had focused on the connectivity challenges happening over the oceans, but this year’s topic...

While oil companies are expanding their bandwidth budgets to accommodate its new, tech-savvy generation of employees, IT and recruitment managers are also expanding their efforts to find the right balance of reliability, cost and security between their operational and personal-use networks.    OilComm’s Thursday-morning Energy Sector Roundtable panel session focused on the importance of crew...