Mark Rawlins, SDA chairman. Photo: Radical Moves PR

[Via Satellite 02-03-2015] Mark Rawlins, director of communication system operations at Eutelsat, has been elected as the new chairman of the Space Data Association (SDA), an international non-profit association of satellite operators that supports the controlled, reliable and efficient sharing of space environment and RF spectrum data. Rawlings succeeds the current SDA chairman, Ronald Busch, who is also vice president of Network Engineering for Intelsat.

The SDA was set up in 2009 by the international commercial satellite operator community with the aim to coordinate activity and safeguard space-based infrastructure in the space environment in which satellites are operating. Today the organization tracks 374 satellites — 237 in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and 137 low and medium Earth orbits (LEO/MEO) from 25 participating satellite operators.