Satellite News

SES Government Solutions (SES GS), a wholly owned subsidiary of SES, has signed a single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) low-latency High Throughput Satellite (HTS) services.

The SpaceDataHighway system – the world’s first ‘optical fibre in the sky’ based on cutting-edge laser technology – has achieved 10,000 successful laser connections. The reliability rate has reached 99.8%, and during the first one and a half years of routine operations these successful connections have downloaded more than 500 terabytes of data.

Inmarsat has been awarded a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) as the Prime Contractor for the new “PACIS-6” Govsatcom Precursor project.

The Airbus-operated SpaceDataHighway has begun regularly relaying data from the Sentinel-2A satellite, after the successful end of the commissioning period. This marks the start of the SpaceDataHighway service using all four Copernicus Sentinel satellites and the beginning of a new era for space-based imagery users.

BridgeSat announced an industry-first agreement with NASA designed to develop a commercialised laser-based free space optical communication system that could support the agency’s future missions as they transition to optical communications.

Viasat Inc. announced the availability of ViaSat-2 satellite communications (SATCOM) service for government, defence and military applications.

Optus Satellite and Telesat announced they will be collaborating in live, over-the-air trials on Telesat’s recently launched low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite.

Spacecom announced that Cobbett Hill Earthstation has entered into a long term agreement for C-Band capacity covering the Sub-Sahara region on the Amos-17 communication satellite.