Technology

Telespazio Brasil opened a new Maricá satellite teleport in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Wednesday March 1, hosting the new OneWeb Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite gateway.  Maricá can host several satellites earth stations, LEO and Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellites infrastructures, and Earth observation ground stations. The teleport has redundant internet connection and fiber connectivity to...

The Space Development Agency (SDA) awarded both Raytheon Technologies and CesiumAstro contracts announced Thursday related to its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) network.  Raytheon Technologies received an award valued at more than $250 million to deliver a seven-vehicle missile tracking satellite constellation, as well as support launch and ground operations. The Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation...

SpaceX shared details of mini second-generation Starlink satellites on Feb. 26, calling them “V2 Minis,” saying the new technology will provide more bandwidth and increased reliability. SpaceX deployed the first round of the satellites in a Monday evening mission from Cape Canaveral, launching 21 V2 Minis to orbit.  This announcement came after the FCC recently...

Qualcomm Technologies is teaming up with Honor, Motorola, Nothing, OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi to develop smartphones with satellite communication capabilities using its Snapdragon Satellite processor. Qualcomm made the announcement, Feb. 27 at the start of Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Snapdragon Satellite is a satellite-based two-way capable messaging solution for smartphones. It offers global...

SatixFy has landed a deal to supply chips to Astrome, in a move the company says takes its business into the terrestrial 5G market and establishes a foothold in India. Astrome is a tech startup based in Bengaluru, India, developing a “Gigamesh” terrestrial backhaul technology.  GigaMesh is a multi-gigabit wireless X-haul radio that Astrome is...

Samsung is the latest big-name electronics manufacturer to look to develop a satellite-based capability. In a major announcement on Feb. 23, the electronics giant said it had secured standardized 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTN) modem technology for direct communication between smartphones and satellites, especially in remote areas. Samsung plans to integrate this technology into the company’s...

The days of the ground satellite segment trailing space capabilities are fast disappearing with a wave of new ground advances that support multi-orbit constellations and the specifications that both 5G and a new generation of high-bandwidth satellites require. The ground segment – from electronically steerable antenna and modem companies to integrators and network providers –...

EnSilica has won a major new contract to develop a new chip to address the next generation of mass market satellite broadband user terminals. The company announced the contract, Feb. 17. The contract has been awarded through the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems Core Competitiveness programme (ARTESCC), through the support of...

BlackSky is incorporating the Inmarsat and Addvalue inter-satellite data relay system, IDRS, in its next-generation satellite design, the companies announced Thursday.  Addvalue has designed a new Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite antenna system that allows full communications coverage when satellites are not in view of a ground station. The IDRS terminal uses Inmarsat’s satellite network and...

A research organization in the Netherlands reached a deal to deploy its laser communications technology on a future Sidus Space satellite for a tech demonstration mission.  The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, known as TNO, will deliver its HemiCAT miniature laser communications terminal to Sidus Space to integrate, deploy, and operate on a LizzieSat...