Technology

Viasat has opened a new ground station for its Real-Time Earth (RTE) service in Hokkaido, Japan, hosted at Infostellar’s site. Viasat said the new 7.3 meter, Ka-band antenna will support high data rate remote sensing missions in polar and inclined orbits through the RTE network. Viasat’s ground-station-as-a-service provides a fully managed ground network. The RTE...

A German new space company is set to show the benefits of in-space manufacturing in 2024. DCUBED aims to demonstrate in-space manufacturing as part of a demonstration mission early next year. The hardware manufacturer announced its plans Aug. 10. The company claims that this will be the first time ever that a product has been...

Recently formed startup Quantum Space plans to open access to and understanding of Geostationary Orbit (GEO) and Cislunar orbit with its upcoming missions. Quantum Space CSO Phil Bracken spoke to Via Satellite during the Small Satelite conference about the company’s progress since closing its Series A round last year.  Describing GEO as a “critical resource,”...

Benchmark Space Systems is expanding its headquarters to ramp up production on propulsion systems, the company announced Tuesday, along with a new autopilot on-board processing feature for customer satellites.  The propulsion company recently closed a $33 million Series B round, and is investing in a new, 40,000-square foot facility to increase its manufacturing capacity by...

The Japanese government has selected Warpspace for a small business innovation research (SBIR) project to develop interoperable optical communication modems and routers. Japan’s SBIR program supports R&D and commercializing small businesses and startups to accelerate innovation in the country.  Warpspace said in an Aug. 6 announcement that it will develop optical communication modems and routers...

IBM announced this week that IBM’s geospatial foundation model watsonx.ai, which is built from NASA‘s satellite data, will now be openly available on AI platform Hugging Face. IBM says this will be the largest geospatial foundation model on Hugging Face and the first-ever open-source AI foundation model built in collaboration with NASA. The model was...

Orbit Communications Systems has unveiled cybersecurity enhancements for its Gaia100 Earth observation (EO) systems. The company announced Aug. 3 that it is introducing NetShroud+ for these systems. The NetShroud+ solution protects the remotely located ground stations from potential local or remote cyber-attacks in order to guarantee that the antenna will point to the Low-Earth Orbit...

Viasat is launching a new family of modem solutions, Black ICE Software Defined Radio product line. The Black ICE SDR modem solutions can be integrated with commercial off-the-shelf and custom waveforms, for secure data transmission for mission-critical operations. Black ICE SDRs are designed to meet the needs of military users with security, flexibility, a low...

Ground segment service provider Leaf Space raised 20 million euros ($22 million) in a Series B round announced July 25. The company also took on a 15 million euro ($17 million) loan from the European Investment Bank of venture debt.  CDP Venture Capital Sgr (through Fondo Evoluzione) and Neva Sgr led the round, with participation...

Quantic X-Microwave confirmed Wednesday that it was contracted by satellite communications systems developer SatixFy to provide up/down converters for the fully regenerative digital processed payload it installed on-board “JoeySat,” one of 16 satellites that SpaceX successfully launched in May for OneWeb and the European Space Agency (ESA). SatixFy utilized Quantic X-Microwave’s modular RF & microwave...