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Recent media articles have taken a negative tone regarding how the government procures commercial technology in space. Last month SpaceNews went as far as stating in a headline that the military “can’t decide what to buy.”
We think that’s an exaggeration. Certainly, the government needs to streamline its acquisition processes, and it is exploring how best […]

The recent Senate confirmation of Rep. Jim Bridenstine as NASA’s 13th administrator bodes well for a fresh perspective that can benefit both the agency and commercial space industry. As the representative for Oklahoma’s first congressional district, Bridenstine is the first elected official to head the nation’s space agency. Since coming to congress in 2013, Bridenstine

Earlier this year the consulting firm Northern Sky Research released the fourth edition of its Unmanned Aircraft Systems Satcom and Imaging Markets report. This report explores opportunities across the UAS industry value chain, with a particular focus on markets for satellite operators and geospatial imaging/analytics companies.
SatCom Frontier reached out to the lead analyst of this

Judging from the omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 2018, Congress and the U.S. Department of Defense understand how critical space is to the nation’s military. According to an article in Space News, the fiscal 2018 budget contains additional millions of dollars for space that the Pentagon did not even request. Appropriators explained that they

The U.S. Air Force has its focus set on space these days, as evidenced by its recently released Fiscal Year 2019 budget and an ongoing review of the military’s space operations. Both look promising.
“The Air Force’s FY-19 budget accelerates our efforts to deter, defend and prevail against anyone who seeks to deny our ability to

Decades of relative tranquility in space have come to an end. The possibility of state-on-state conflict has become part of military planning, making flexible and continuous connectivity more critical than ever for defence forces around the world. The cybersecurity threat to SATCOM has also increased, both from hostile governments and non-state actors.
These new realities are

Disruption or innovation – which term most accurately describes the government and military markets for commercial SATCOM? That’s the question posed by a thought-provoking article published last week by research firm Northern Sky Research.
The article addresses head-on something not often discussed openly by commercial providers:  the government can be a difficult customer to serve. Unique

Our first Intelsat Epic satellite has been in space a little over two years now, and we have launched four more since then. With five of these high-throughput satellites (HTS) in orbit and being used by our customers, we have gained quite a bit of both test data and real-world experience demonstrating the capabilities and

Our first Intelsat Epic satellite has been in space a little over two years now, and we have launched four more since then. With five of these high-throughput satellites (HTS) in orbit and being used by our customers, we have gained quite a bit of both test data and real-world experience demonstrating the capabilities and

For more than a decade, commercial satellite providers have been working with the U.S. military and Congress to shift the government away from the mindset that it needed to own its own satellites in order to meet its mission and assure network security. A recent article in Space News, focusing on an Air Force budget

High-throughput satellite (HTS) constellations have quickly become transformative technology for satellite communications, far surpassing the bandwidth speed and throughput possible with existing satellite communications.
Earlier this month SatCom Frontier published a story explaining the difference between open vs. closed HTS architecture. Open architecture systems give government end users more control over their data and more flexibility

Sixty years ago, the United States successfully launched the nation’s first satellite into space. The satellite, Explorer 1, was tiny by today’s standards: 80 inches long, a bit over 6 inches in diameter, and weighing just under 31 pounds. But unlike the USSR’s Sputnik satellite launched a few months earlier, which simply demonstrated the feasibility

Recognizing the unique capabilities of helicopters for a wide range of missions, U.S. and foreign governments are actively procuring new aircraft or refreshing their existing fleets. As they rely on these assets for a variety of operations spanning both civilian and military applications, in contested areas, providing broadband connectivity with anti-jamming capabilities becomes increasingly important.
The

Over the past couple of years, multiple commercial satellite operators have begun launching high-throughput satellite (HTS) constellations. These next-generation satellites provide far more throughput than existing wideband satellites, with increases in throughput 2 to 6 times the bandwidth equivalent of conventional commercial or Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellites.
Moving to HTS in space in many ways

Flexible and continuous connectivity, especially in contested environments, is a critical priority for defence forces around the world. No nation in Europe can go it alone, so secure, interoperable communications networks are mandatory considering today’s geopolitical realities.
For these reasons, on 13 November 2017 ministers from 23 member states signed a joint notification on the Permanent