{"id":69864,"date":"2016-09-27T19:37:39","date_gmt":"2016-09-27T11:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/5-takeaways-from-this-years-world-satellite-business-week\/"},"modified":"2016-09-27T19:37:39","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T11:37:39","slug":"5-takeaways-from-this-years-world-satellite-business-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/5-takeaways-from-this-years-world-satellite-business-week\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Takeaways from this Year\u2019s World Satellite Business Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

[Via Satellite 09-27-2016] In a year of landing rockets, mega-High Throughput Satellite (HTS) ideas and renewed faith in Non-Geosynchronous (NGSO) orbits, 2016 has been exceptionally newsworthy. Even more news came out during Euroconsult<\/strong>\u2019s 2016 World Satellite Business Week (WSBW) in Paris earlier this month, including a new family of Proton rockets, a Blue Origin <\/strong>reusable orbital vehicle and a massive new satellite award to Boeing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Via Satellite <\/em>tallies up our top five takeaways exclusively from panel sessions at WSBW.<\/p>\n

1. Telesat Talks Numbers on LEO Constellation<\/h2>\n

Global satellite operator Telesat <\/strong>threw its hat in the LEO ring this year, announcing in April that the company had secured \u201cvery favorable\u201d Ka-band spectrum rights from the International Telecommunications Union <\/strong>(ITU), and placed orders with Surrey Satellite Technology Limited <\/strong>(SSTL) and Space Systems Loral <\/strong>(SSL) for prototype spacecraft. On a panel at WSBW, Telesat President and CEO Dan Goldberg said the operator could achieve full global coverage with 72 satellites in polar orbits, but wants to start with far more than that in order to address very high bandwidth capacity requirements.<\/p>\n

Goldberg said the pending constellation \u201cwill be a mix of a polar orbit and inclined and equatorial orbit\u201d satellites in order to prevent the system from aggregating most of the capacity over the poles. The larger number, he said, would let Telesat add capacity in more populated regions.<\/p>\n

\u201c[With an] initial 72 you get full global coverage, but 150 to 200 combined will provide a huge amount of usable capacity as opposed to just theoretical capacity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Goldberg said the constellation would use inter-satellite links to communicate between spacecraft, and that Telesat has filed patents for \u201csome really unique features\u201d on how it will operate. Telesat anticipates the constellation will serve mobility markets, government, and some point-to-point trunking applications. Goldberg said initially the constellation would not focus on residential broadband, but perhaps as technology evolves, this could become a reachable market as well.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a global IP network and every satellite in the network is a router,\u201d he explained. \u201cI think the markets it addresses is going to be a function of where particularly ground technology is at any given point.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. SSL Building Octagonal Satellites for Terabit-Level Spacecraft<\/h2>\n

SSL President John Celli, a 40-year industry veteran, said the industry has never realized the cost of fitting a square peg in a round hole. Minus a few earlier satellites of the past, Celli said that the industry has essentially \u201cbeen designing satellites in the wrong way\u201d because they don\u2019t adequately consider the available volume inside a rocket.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe launch vehicle is a cylinder, pretty much, and we put in a satellite that has a form factor with a footprint of a square or rectangle. It\u2019s the wrong way to do it; you are wasting a lot of volume,\u201d he said. Celli added that SSL has done a study showing how to shrink the size of an HTS satellite to less than half the size of one currently in its factory \u201cby building the satellites in modules using the flexibility of the software-defined payload.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not ready to publicize it yet, but we do have a design that basically has modules of roughly octagonal shape that you can fit one on top of the other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Celli added that the modular design could allow customers to one day remove payloads after a few years and install fresh ones while on orbit. Though admitting skepticism about the viability of the terabit-level satellite, he said this is a significant industry milestone for the year.<\/p>\n

3. Coface Will Strictly Link OneWeb Support to Level of French Labor<\/h2>\n

Frederique Gournail, head of project finance for space, telecommunications and energy at Coface<\/strong>, the French Export Credit Agency (ECA), said that when it comes to funding projects, the agency works within a rigid regulatory framework. While there is no cap for how much Coface could technically support a project, Gournail said the agency sets its limit based on \u201cthe French content of the deals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talking specifically about OneWeb<\/strong>, Gournail said Coface would have to see which companies are involved and what amount of French content is in the commercial contract. \u201cOur guarantee of support will be directly linked to this amount,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

OneWeb has created a joint venture with Airbus Defence and Space<\/strong> to form OneWeb Satellites<\/strong>, the company tasked with building 900 small telecommunications satellites. OneWeb Satellites plans to build the first 10 in France before moving mass production to the United States. Along with Airbus, French partners include Arianespace<\/strong> for launch and Sodern<\/strong> for star trackers. Of particular importance, Gournail said Coface weighs labor very heavily when determining how much funding to give.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t consider the \u2018made by\u2019 or \u2018made for\u2019 as French content. It\u2019s really the people who are working in France that counts,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Gournail said Coface is in the very early stages of determining how much financial support it will give to OneWeb. She described the ECA\u2019s role as being present for French exporters to take risk when the market will not, or to be part of senior lending when a deal is to big to be financed solely by the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be here to support our exporter but we will be very careful because we owe it to the taxpayer,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Coface has garnered increased attention since the expiry of the Export Import Bank of America<\/strong>\u2019s charter last year, which put a freeze on new projects. The U.S. Congress has since reauthorized Ex-Im Bank, but the ECA still lacks a quorum on its board of directors and is therefore incapable of financing projects in excess of $10 million.<\/p>\n

4. SpaceX Expects to Return to Flight by November<\/h2>\n

While admitting at the time that SpaceX<\/strong> had not identified the root cause of the Sept. 1 anomaly that claimed both rocket and payload (Spacecom<\/strong>\u2019s Amos 6 satellite), President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said the company estimates it shouldn\u2019t take more than about three months for the Falcon 9 to return to flight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are anticipating being down for about three months and getting back to flight in the November timeframe. We\u2019ll launch on the East Coast from Pad 39A in that timeframe and then Vandenberg will be available for our customers Iridium<\/strong> and our other [Sun-Synchronous Orbit] SSO customers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has formed a team with NASA<\/strong>, the Federal Aviation Administration<\/strong> (FAA) and the Air Force<\/strong> to study the anomaly. Shotwell said that SpaceX will not fly until it has a good understanding of the cause or causes that led to the Sept. 1 explosion. The November estimate, she said, is based on the timeline for recovery from the Commercial Resupply Services 7 (CRS-7) mission that destroyed a Falcon 9 and Dragon payload in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came back after a significant flight failure last June in five and a half months, combined with the rollout of a brand new rocket \u2026 so I don\u2019t think we are going to need more than three months or so,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 23, SpaceX released a statement that traces the explosion to \u201ca large breach in the cryogenic helium system of the second stage liquid oxygen tank.\u201d The company updated this statement, which is based on a preliminary review of data and debris to add that \u201cat this time, the cause of the potential breach remains unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX said there is no connection between this year\u2019s failure and last year\u2019s CRS-7 mishap. So far SpaceX has launched eight times this year \u2014 a new record for the company. The Sept. 1 explosion does further push back the debut of the Falcon Heavy, with Shotwell now saying the rocket would probably have its maiden flight in the first quarter of 2017 as opposed to this year. In the meantime, she said the focus is getting back to flight as quickly as the company can do so reliably.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know the rocket pretty well, and there are a few things we can exonerate, and a few things we need to go take a closer look at. Maybe it\u2019s a confident hope, but whatever the issue is, we\u2019ll find it and we\u2019ll fix it, and three months is about the right amount of time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

5. Space Resources Companies Gravitating to Luxembourg<\/h2>\n

In line with Luxembourg\u2019s goal of being the go-to location in Europe for space resource and exploration companies, Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said companies interestd in new forms of space business such as asteroid or lunar mining are setting up shop in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cA space robotics research team has started work at the University of Luxembourg<\/strong>, and new companies are settling in Luxembourg on a monthly basis, integrating our space cluster. Deep Space Industries<\/strong> as well as Planetary Resources<\/strong> have opened up shop in Luxembourg, and their engineers are building satellites in Luxembourg right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Luxembourg, the home of SES<\/strong> and Intelsat<\/strong>, is aming to be the first country in Europe to create a legal framework for private industry to pursue resources in space. Bettel reaffirmed that Luxembourg is drafting this framework with full consideration of international law. \u201cWe are eager to engage with other countries on this matter within a multilateral framework,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Both Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have satellite constellation projects underway. Planetary Resources is building a hyperspectral Earth Observation (EO) satellite system that it anticipates will generate revenue while driving the technology needed for asteroid mining. Deep Space Industries is building the pathfinder satellite constellation for HawkEye 360<\/strong>, a company that plans to conduct space-based radio frequency mapping.<\/p>\n

Bettel said space is a risky field to do business, but expressed confidence that there will be rewarding discoveries along with way. From a policy standpoint, he said Luxembourg wants to continue to prepare for more successes in the space industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the technology works and people adopt it, the legislation has to follow. Of course, the opposite is equally true. If legislation is future-proof, this also helps innovation to occur,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Via Satellite 09-27-2016] In a year of landing rockets, mega-High Throughput Satellite (HTS) ideas and renewed faith in Non-Geosynchronous (NGSO) orbits, 2016 has been exceptionally newsworthy. Even more news came out during Euroconsult\u2019s 2016 World Satellite Business Week (WSBW) in Paris earlier this month, including a new family of Proton rockets, a Blue Origin reusable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69864"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}