Government/Military

Avanti Communications announced a key hosted payload deal earlier this year when it signed a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA). The operator is also moving forward with plans to expand its fleet further. David Williams, CEO, Avanti Communications, talks about the ESA deal as well as what is on deck for the company...

Via Satellite and the SATELLITE show group recently announced the opening of registration for our second annual Hosted Payload Summit in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 27. The event was created last year to take an in-depth look at the issues and challenges surrounding hosted payloads, such as business cases, policies, government/military requirements, sector involvement, risk and...

Spaceflight Inc. has unveiled its Sherpa in-space tug vehicle to inject hosted payloads into different orbits.     The Sherpa 400 is optimized for low Earth orbit (LEO) missions. The company will build two versions of Sherpa – a smaller version that will be capable of accelerating a payload to 400m/s change in velocity and a larger...

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) is soliciting ancillary payloads for its upcoming Orbital Test-Bed (OTB) mission that will be launched in the first quarter of 2015.    The OTB mission aims to offer a low risk, cost effective opportunity for the flight and operation of payloads, subsystems and equipments in low Earth orbit for both...

ATK has confirmed the retirement of the Tactical Satellite-3 (TacSat-3) spacecraft, which was de-orbited to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere on April 30 – nearly three years after its launch in May 2009.    ATK, the spacecraft’s bus manufacturer and prime contractor for the U.S. Air Force, designed TacSat-3 to endure six months of...

Lockheed Martin has named Robert Cleave its new president of Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services (LMCLS) effective May 1.     Cleave succeeds Jack Zivic who is retiring at the end of April following 28 years of service with the company.    Cleave will be responsible for expanding the company’s launch services business encompassing sales, marketing,...

[Satellite TODAY Insider 05-05-12] GeoEye has made an offer to acquire its rival satellite imagery company DigitalGlobe for $792.3 million in cash and stocks, GeoEye CEO Matt O’Connell announced during a May 4 conference call.    The GeoEye proposal would give DigitalGlobe’s shareholders a total consideration of $17 per share in cash and stock —...

[Satellite News 05-07-12] Satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe has unequivocally rejected an unsolicited $792.3 million cash and stock acquisition bid from its imagery sector rival GeoEye and called the offer a “hostile” attempt to rapidly push the merger along in a statement released May 6.    “[GeoEye’s] offer substantially undervalues [DigitalGlobe] in relation our standalone business...

[Satellite TODAY 05-04-12] The European Commission (EC) will launch its next pair of ESA-procured Galileo satellites Sept. 28 on an Arianespace Soyuz rocket from French Guiana. EC Vice President Antonio Tajani and Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean Yves Le Gall announced the launch May 2 in Brussels.    The Galileo satellites will join two other...

[Satellite TODAY 05-04-12] The U.S. Air Force has postponed the planned launch of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency 2 (AEHF 2) satellite by at least one day due to a technical glitch that was discovered during an attempted liftoff, the Air Force announced May 3.    ULA will attempt to launch AEHF 2 on May...