Opinion

Imagine you are a European satellite operator looking to sell your capacity and land signals into a given region or territory. You’ve got the necessary ground segment and orbital resources in place, your mandatory International Telecommunication Union (ITU) filing secured and coordination in progress. If you were looking to wholesale the capacity only in Europe,...

Five years after launching its Transporter program, SpaceX now enjoys a monopoly on smallsat rideshare with heavy launchers, with the lowest price point on the market and an average launch every 90 days. Although this business line is a minor revenue stream for SpaceX, it brings several other advantages, such as maintaining pressure on emerging...

The space sector is brimming with potential, stimulated by advancements in technology, expanded international partnerships, and increased awareness of the benefits of accessing space. The growth of the lunar economy, in particular, is expected to spur innovation and technological advancements: there are over 400 lunar missions anticipated by 2032. As we push the boundaries of...

The FCC, led by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, is working to develop a “single network future” in which satellite connectivity will help make terrestrial “dead zones” a thing of the past.  To advance this goal, the FCC in March 2024 adopted a “Supplemental Coverage from Space” (SCS) regulatory framework. The Commission’s SCS framework will allow satellite...

I would hazard a guess that most Via Satellite readers have been following Starship’s development tests fairly closely, or at the very least, watching the livestream tests. But to recap: Starship is designed for a wide variety of missions – Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) to Geostationary Orbit (GEO), lunar missions, and, of course, Mars and beyond. Its...

The new EU AI Act (at the time of writing, not published yet) is a seminal legal act, bringing rules for the development and placement of AI systems in the EU market. However, the EU legislation does not expressly address the space sector. There is increasing recognition in policy and in law of the role...

In August, 2022, less than six months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Atlantic Council’s David T. Burbach proposed that the conflict was the first ‘two-sided space war.’ He described how Ukraine, having no indigenous space capacity, had made effective use of space-based communications, surveillance and reconnaissance from providers based in the United States and...

We are entering an industrial era in which space is becoming an important driver of technological advancement, global sustainability and geopolitical competition; one in which investing in interoperability is more critical than ever. Prioritizing interoperability and decentralization is now required to ensure that space exploration brings more benefit than harm to humanity. Throughout history, the...

For at least two decades, there has been rising recognition and concern about a problem for our industry. Not a little problem. A big, hairy bodacious problem that could put our entire business out of business. It’s the problem of keeping things in Earth orbit from smashing into other things. Space, with the support of...

Recently at Cal Poly, we released a 95-page report on outer space cyberattacks, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. As the first of its kind, it explains not only what is driving this growing problem, but also how to anticipate novel scenarios to avoid being taken by surprise. Here are the 10 top findings from...