Government/Military

[Satellite TODAY 05-04-12] Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Board of Directors has elected Joseph Weiss as President and CEO of IAI, replacing retiring current president and CEO Itzhak Nissan, IAI announced May 3.    Weiss’ nomination is pending approval of the Israeli Ministers of Defense and Finance.    Weiss previously served as corporate vice president and...

[Satellite TODAY Insider 05-03-12] The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) 2012 EnhancedView budget is fully funded, said satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe, which indicated that expectations of a 40 percent cut to NGA contracts are likely overdone.    During a May 2 conference call to announce its latest financial results, DigitalGlobe management said the NGA informed the...

[Satellite News 05-03-12] Like many other tech-focused executives in the satellite broadband industry, iDirect CTO David Bettinger is very familiar with what makes Ka-band so alluring – the bandwidth offers high performance for a high-demand market.    Satellite News spoke with Bettinger about how Ka-band has enabled the emergence of the consumer business, brought high-speed...

[Satellite TODAY 05-02-12] Canadian space and satellite technology company MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) has been contracted by Sierra Nevada Corp. to develop concepts for a communications solution that will be used on a commercial space shuttle replacement, the companies confirmed May 1.    The engineering concept will be part of the ongoing phase of...

[Satellite TODAY 05-02-12] Lockheed Martin Space Systems has successfully mated the spacecraft bus and the imaging payload for GeoEye’s next-generation, high-resolution imaging satellite, the manufacturer announced May 1.    The GeoEye-2 imaging payload includes a telescope, sensor subsystem and outer barrel assembly that can capture panchromatic ground sample distance imagery of the Earth’s surface at...

iDrirect Unveils New Military Airborne Router iDirect Government Technologies has released a satellite router that aims to enable constant connectivity between manned and unmanned aircraft for uninterrupted command and control communications between theaters and the transmission of high-definition imagery from aircraft to soldiers on the ground. KVH Opens New Satellite Observatory, Testing Facility KVH Industries...

DigitalGlobe Inks Two Imagery Licensing Deals With Microsoft High-resolution earth imagery provider DigitalGlobe has signed two licensing agreements with Microsoft. The first agreement more than doubles the volume of high-resolution imagery DigitalGlobe delivers to Microsoft for use in its Bing Maps service. The imagery will be delivered on a quarterly basis to provide refreshed content...

[Satellite TODAY Insider 05-01-12] Facing potential cuts to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) multibillion-dollar EnhancedView program, imagery satellite operators GeoEye and DigitalGlobe have secured valuable international partnerships that could help offset government market losses.    GeoEye confirmed April 29 that it had signed a memorandum of understanding to partner with global IT solutions provider Rolta...

[Satellite TODAY 05-01-12] Canadian space and satellite technology company MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) has signed a three-year, $1.7 million contract with the Dutch government to provide Radarsat-2 information to the Netherlands Space Office (NSO), MDA announced April 29.    MDA said the information from the Radarsat-2 satellite would be used to provide information for...

[Satellite News 05-02-12] 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...