Government/Military

General Dynamics Mission Systems has received a contract from the U.S. Navy to restore and maintain a satellite system simulator for students at the Naval Postgraduate School, Spacecraft Research and Design Center / Adaptive Optics Center of Excellence. The simulator, a model of a Navy Fleet Satellite (FLTSAT) communications satellite, will help students hone their skills...

Japan has put another satellite into orbit to gather intelligence for national security purposes, as reported by NHK. An H2A rocket carrying the intelligence-gathering satellite lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, southern Japan, on Tuesday. It put the satellite into orbit some 20 minutes later, however, other launch details have not been disclosed...

Government representatives from Brazil and the United States will resume negotiations that failed 15 years ago to allow the U.S. to use Brazil’s Alcantara Launch Base for its satellites. The decision to rekindle stalled talks followed a meeting between Brazil’s Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on June 4. Unlike...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted authorization to SES to serve the United States market using a significantly expanded O3b fleet in the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). The FCC grant opens additional frequencies to SES for use in its Non-Geostationary Orbit (NGSO) constellation and enables it to deploy O3b mPower satellites into inclined...

A Northrop Grumman payload will provide highly protected communications for warfighters under a new $429 million contract with the U.S. Air Force. The company was awarded a $429 million contract to provide two Extremely High Frequency eXtended Data Rate (EHF XDR) payloads for the Enhanced Polar System-Recapitalization (EPS-R). The contract was awarded by Space and...

The U.S. Marine Corps is set to become the first service to widely deploy the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite communication capability for the battlefield as it looks to install the system across its radios by this fall. MUOS capabilities will be fielded to the Marines’ AN/PRC-117G radios through the fourth quarter of FY...

Harris Corporation has provided Lockheed Martin with its fifth of 10 advanced navigation payloads contracted for the U.S. Air Force GPS III satellite program. The GPS III navigation payload features a Mission Data Unit (MDU) with a 70-percent digital design that links atomic clocks, radiation-hardened computers and powerful transmitters, enabling signals three times more accurate...

SES Government Solutions (SES GS), a wholly owned subsidiary of SES, has signed a single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), low-latency, High Throughput Satellite (HTS) services. The total amount of all orders placed against the BPA cannot exceed $516.7 million over a five-year period...

On Sunday, a volcano erupted in Guatemala killing at least 25 people and injuring hundreds, according to Reuters. The eruption of Volcan de Fuego, which translates to Volcano of Fire, is the most violent in the country in decades, and its second eruption this year. The lava has reached a 5-mile radius and spewed black...

The first imagery from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES-17 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) has made its public debut. The imagery of the Western Hemisphere was created using two visible bands (blue and red) and one near-infrared “vegetation” band that are functional with the current cooling system performance. This debut comes as experts continue...