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MARCH 12, 2018BUSINESS | POLITICS | PERSPECTIVE
CONSTELLATION CONSTERNATION
DIVINING WHAT THE STARS HAVE IN STORE FOR BROADBAND MEGACONSTELLATIONS
INSIDE
GEO smallsat startupFlorida Space Coast congestion5G harmonization
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ABOVE: Falcon 9, Atlas 5 and SLS were literally on the table during U.S. President Donald Trump’s March 8 cabinet meeting. The scale models were a nod to Vice President Mike Pence’s leadership of the National Space Council, which held its second meeting Feb. 21. Trump said Falcon Heavy demonstrated that companies can provide capabilities far less expensively than the government. He also said NASA was making “tremendous strides” but was less spe-cific about the agency’s accomplishments beyond the upcoming launch of the Mars Insight lander mission.
C O N T E N T S 0 3 . 1 2 . 1 8
DEPARTMENTS
FEATURES
10More launches, more problemsEfforts are underway to
ease Florida Space Coast
congestion.
22Analyzing DoD’s space budget The U.S. Air Force is spending
more on space, but its
modernization path remains
a big question.
13Constellation consternationThe world’s biggest satellite
operators are trying to divine
what the stars hold in store
for LEO and MEO broaband.
20St. Helena’s subsea cable billA tiny tropical island is looking
to an unlikely patron for help
paying its undersea cable bill:
the satellite industry.
@SpaceNews_Inc youtube.com/user/SpaceNewsInc linkedin.com/company/spacenewsFb.com/SpaceNewslncFOLLOW US
3 QUICK TAKES
6 NEWS Sea Launch CEO to
shove off after sale to S7
finally closes
Astranis aims to provide
broadband using small
GEO satellites
25 ON NATIONAL SECURITY Missed opportunities in
space-based missile
defense
26 COMMENTARY
Blaine Curcio What would it take for
SoftBank to invest
in SpaceX?
28 COMMENTARY Jennifer A. Manner Balancing terrestrial
5G and satellite 5G
needs for international
spectrum harmonization
32 FOUST FORWARD Whither space
technology (again)
2 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
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QUICK TAKES
$4.5MThe amount Sky Perfect JSAT is investing in maritime connectivity company KVH. The deal will support further joint work between the companies on products for internet access at sea. Sky Perfect JSAT is Asia’s largest operator of geostationary satellites, and KVH has been a long-time customer, buying capacity for maritime services.
50The number of Falcon 9 launches SpaceX has completed as of March 6, when it lofted the SSL-built Hispasat 30W-6 satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit.
$69MThe amount Kratos will get for its Public Safety & Security System Integration Business, which it is selling in order to focus on satellite communications and drones.
$355MThe amount KBR is paying to acquire NASA contracting firm Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies and fold it into its KBRwyle government services business. SGT employs roughly 2,500.
16The number of satellites O3b has in orbit following the March 9 launch of an Arianespace Soyuz carrying four of O3b’s first-generation medium-Earth-orbit broadband satellites.
SIGNIFICANT DIGITS
LOCK
HEE
D M
ARTI
N/T
ELES
AT
FREQUENT FLYERLockheed Martin started assembling JCSAT-17, a telecommunications satellite for
Japanese fleet operator Sky Perfect JSAT, ahead of a 2019 launch on an Ariane 5 rocket.
The satellite is based on Lockheed Martin’s LM2100 satellite bus and will carry S-band
transponders for communicating during natural disasters and other peak-traffic events. The
satellite will also carry C- and Ku-band payloads. Though Lockheed Martin’s commercial
satellite presence is small compared to competitors like Boeing and Space Systems Loral, Sky
Perfect JSAT is a frequent customer, having purchased seven Lockheed Martin-built satellites
over the years. JCSAT-17, the eighth, will include an advanced payload processor that can
reallocate bandwidth where demand is located — an increasingly sought-after feature in
telecom satellites.
GETTING A TASTE OF LEOMore operators of geostationary communications satellites are getting
involved with low Earth orbit satellite systems. Eutelsat, long a staunch
defender of GEO satellites, said late last week it is buying a demonstration
nanosatellite from Tyvak International. Eutelsat said it will use the satellite
to explore the possible use of such satellites to provide narrowband
connectivity for Internet of Things applications. Singapore-based Optus
also said last week it will join in tests of the demonstration satellite for
Telesat’s planned LEO broadband constellation. Eutelsat and Optus join
several other GEO satellite operators who previously announced plans to
partner with or invest in non-geostationary satellite ventures.
Lockheed Martin technicians work on the wiring for the JCSAT-17 satellite.
Artist’s concept of Telesat LEO demo satellite.
BOEING/B
LACK
SKY
4 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
QUICK TAKES
CEO SHUFFLE• The departing CEO of satellite operator
SES is taking a job with a cybersecurity
firm in the UAE. Karim Michel Sabbagh
will become CEO
of DarkMatter,
a cybersecurity
firm based in Abu
Dhabi and with
offices in Canada,
China and Finland.
SES announced
earlier this year
that Sabbagh
would leave the company in April and be
replaced by Steve Collar.
• Xtar has hired a Comtech executive as
its new CEO. Jay Icard, a 13-year Comtech
employee who most
recently worked as
senior vice president
of strategic sales
for the company’s
Command
& Control
Technologies
division, will
succeed Philip
Harlow as president and CEO.
• Inflight connectivity companies Gogo
and Global Eagle Entertainment also
have new CEOs. Oakleigh Thorne, a Gogo
board director, replaced Michael Small
last week. Josh Marks, Global Eagle’s
executive vice president for connectivity,
will become the company’s third CEO in
little over a year when he replaces Jeff
Leddy in April.
• UrtheCast is replacing CEO Wade
Larson with board member Greg Nordal
as interim chief executive. Larson will
continue as a special adviser to the
board focused on strategic business
development.
NORTHERN EXPOSURETelesat could be the beneficiary
of a Canadian budget proposal
to invest in rural broadband
services. The proposal included
100 million Canadian dollars ($82
million) over five years for an
initiative to provide broadband to
underserved areas, specifying the
use of satellites in low Earth orbit.
Telesat, the Canadian operator of
geostationary communications
satellites, is currently developing
a constellation of LEO satellites.
The budget proposal didn’t offer
specific details on how the funds
would be dispersed or whether
the Canadian Space Agency
would be behind those decisions.
TERMINAL CONDITIONSES has signed up three partners to develop
ground terminals for its mPOWER broadband
satellite system. ALCAN, Isotropic Systems and
Viasat will develop high-throughput terminals
to work with the mPOWER satellites being built
by Boeing for SES. That satellite system, due to
be launched into medium Earth orbit in the early
2020s, will provide terabits of capacity globally.
BLACKSKY READY FOR LAUNCHThe first satellite for the BlackSky constellation of Earth-imaging satellites is
complete and ready for launch. Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries said last week that
the Global-1 satellite is the first of four that the company plans to launch in the next year
on U.S. and foreign launch vehicles. The satellite, capable of taking images at a resolution
of one meter, will be part of an eventual constellation of 60 satellites Spaceflight is
developing in a partnership with Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio.
Join the pioneers already fl ying STIM210 in space
Sensonor fi rst started supplying its small IMUs to space applications in 2012. Today STIM210 is in use in LEO CubeSat, Micro- and Nano-satellites for pointing and stabilization, fl ight control, and guidance – with 5 to 10 times lower weight than the next-best alternative.
When size and performance matter
[email protected] • www.sensonor.com
SEA
LAU
NCH
NEWS LAUNCH INDUSTRY
Sea Launch CEO to shove off when sale to S7 finally closes
more, orbiting the Eutelsat-3B telecom-
munications satellite in May 2014. It hasn’t
launched since.
In an interview with SpaceNews, Gug-
kaev didn’t give a specific reason for his
near-term departure, saying
only that the timing is right
because of Sea Launch’s
ownership changes. Russian
aviation giant S7 Group an-
nounced at the International
Astronautical Congress (IAC)
in September 2016 its intent
to buy Sea Launch and its
assets, including its Odyssey
sea-faring launch base and
Sea Launch Commander
ship used to transport Zenit rockets and
launch personnel.
“It’s a good moment with these ownership
changes,” he said. “I’ve spent an incredible
nearly six years in my position. It has been
tough, it has been extremely interesting, it
has been an extraordinary time in a unique
project with extraordinary people, but I
After steering Sea Launch into
the hands of a new owner, chief
executive Sergey Gugkaev will
leave the company to look for a
new role elsewhere in the space industry.
Gugkaev has been CEO
of Sea Launch since 2012,
and oversaw the company’s
attempt to reestablish itself
after emerging from bank-
ruptcy only two years earlier.
Switzerland-based Sea
Launch struggled to regain
traction in the commercial
market despite launching five
times in 14 months between
late 2011 and December 2012.
A 2013 failure that destroyed a $400
million Intelsat satellite, and the lack of any
government customer ensuring consis-
tent demand for Zenit rockets, forced Sea
Launch out of the market the following
year. The company launched only once
6 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
CALEB HENRY
believe right now it’s a good time to move
for new challenges after the deal is done.”
S7 Group’s purchase was expected to
be complicated given Sea Launch’s own-
ership makeup or Russian, European and
American owners, but still took longer than
expected. At IAC, S7 Group CEO Vladislav
Filev said S7 Group and Sea Launch esti-
mated it would take six months to obtain
the necessary regulatory approvals from
the involved nations. Instead it has taken
15 months.
Barring additional surprises, Gugkaev
said he expects the sale will close in the
next month or two, now that the most sig-
nificant regulatory hurdles are in the past.
“We are now working on transition with
S7. They are bringing their team and we
are working with them on many aspects,
giving them a lot of details on how the Sea
Launch business operates,” he said.
Sea Launch numbers between 40 and
50 people today, compared to over 100
when the company was fully operational,
Gugkaev said. He said S7 Group has not
yet picked his successor.
Gugkaev said it will be S7 Group’s decision
whether to stick with the Russian-Ukrainian
Zenit rocket as Sea Launch’s designated
launch vehicle, or use a different vehicle,
such as the Soyuz-5, an all-Russian rocket
now under development.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea from
Ukraine in 2014 strained relations between
the two companies, and muddied the fu-
ture of the Zenit rocket. The land-launched
version of Zenit has flown twice since
the Ukraine crisis: once in 2015 with the
Russian weather satellite Electro-L, and
once last year with Angola’s Russian-built
telecom satellite Angosat-1. Both launched
from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, and
neither was organized by Sea Launch. SN
CEO Sergey Gugkaev
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BOOTH 700
NEWS SILICON VALLEY
Astranis aims to provide broad-band using small GEO satellites
“Each extra satellite that we put up is adding more capacity, but we can start with just one.”
solve this problem in telecommunications,”
said John Gedmark, chief executive of Astranis
and the former executive director of the Com-
mercial Spaceflight Federation, in an interview.
Gedmark is one of the co-founders of Astranis,
along with Ryan McLinko, the company’s chief
technology officer.
Each of the company’s smallsats will weigh
300 kilograms and generate about two kilowatts
of power. A key enabling technology, he said,
is a digital payload developed by the company
that provides design flexibility and enables
lower costs.
The company recently tested that payload on
an experimental cubesat, DemoSat-2, launched
on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in
January. “Everything on the satellite worked
perfectly,” he said, including a test of its ability
to perform “full broadband comms” during a
ground station pass last month.
Astranis believes it can combine the low costs
and economies of scale provided by small satel-
lites with the ability, by operating from GEO, to
start providing service with just a single satellite.
“We can do everything we need to do with small
satellites, put them up one at a time, build them
on an assembly line and get to a dramatically
lower cost,” Gedmark said.
The Series A round provides Astranis with the
funding to develop and build the first satellite,
allowing it to provide services far sooner than if it
developed a LEO constellation. “In GEO, you can
put up a single satellite to start,” he said, versus
an “all-or-nothing” approach for LEO constel-
lations where hundreds of satellites may need
A startup company has raised $18 million
to provide broadband internet access
from space using small satellites in
geostationary orbit.
San Francisco-based Astranis announced
the Series A funding round March 1 led by
Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen
Horowitz. Others participating in the funding
round include Y Combinator, Fifty Years, Re-
factor Capital and Indicator Fund.
The funding will go towards the development
of the first in what the company plans to be doz-
ens of smallsats that can each provide up to 10
gigabits per second of capacity. Those satellites,
the company’s founders and investors argue,
can provide internet access to underserved ar-
eas more cost-effectively than traditional large
geostationary satellites or constellations of low
Earth orbit smallsats.
“We’ve taken a lot of these new approaches
around small satellites and applied them to
8 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
ASTR
ANIS
JEFF FOUST
Astranis co-founders Ryan McLinko and John Gedmark
SPACENEWS.COM | 9
ASTR
ANIS
to be launched before beginning service.
“You don’t need billions of dollars.
You don’t need years and years to build
and launch them all,” he said. “Each extra
satellite that we put up is adding more
capacity, but we can start with just one.”
The company plans to partner with
existing, but undisclosed, GEO satellite
operators who would provide orbital slots.
Gedmark said Astranis is in talks with a
number of them. Those operators would
handle the sales and marketing of the
services provided by the Astranis satellites,
which can use standard Ka- or Ku-band
ground terminals.
Astranis currently has 20 employees,
and looks to grow to about 30 in the next
year and 40 to 50 by the time the com-
pany’s first operational satellite is in orbit,
Gedmark said. The company is building
out a 1,400-square-meter facility in San
Francisco that will serve as the manufac-
turing facility for the satellites.
Gedmark said he was not worried about
competition from large GEO satellites or LEO
constellations, or even terrestrial services,
given what he perceived as the vast size
of the market. “If a market is growing fast
enough, or is big enough, you just don’t
spend any time worrying about competi-
tors because it’s really more of a problem of
just being able to scale fast enough to meet
the demand,” he said. “There’s no question
that the world’s hunger for bandwidth is
one of those cases.”
That’s a view shared by Martin Casado,
general partner at Andreessen Horowitz
and a member of the board of directors of
Astranis. “Broadband alone is a $120 billion
market,” he said in an interview. “I think
there’s a very large business to build there.”
Astranis is the first space business that
Andreessen Horowitz has invested in, and
Casado said he met with dozens of space
startups before making this investment.
“We wanted to make sure that we made
an investment in an area that we under-
stood,” he said, citing his background in
networking.
“We loved the Astranis approach, which
felt like a nice compromise in the design
space” between large GEO satellites and
LEO constellations, he said. “You can get
a flexible satellite that’s much smaller and
provide coverage in the near-term.”
Casado said that, in addition to the
funding his firm is providing, he will be
offering advice on growing a business
based on his experience creating a net-
working startup that was later acquired
by VMware. Dan Birkenstock, one of the
co-founders of Skybox Imaging, will also
serve as a board observer to provide ad-
vice to Astranis.
He added that he hopes to learn more
about the space industry through this
investment. “I’m excited to learn about
space, and hopefully that will lead to fur-
ther space investments.” SN
Astranis is planning to develop small GEO satellites weighing only a few hundred kilograms that can provide up to 10 gigabits per second of bandwidth.
SPAC
EX/U
NIT
ED L
AUN
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LLIA
NCE
JEFF FOUST
MORE LAUNCHES, MORE PROBLEMSEfforts underway to ease Florida Space Coast congestion
SPACE COAST
THE GOOD NEWS FOR FLORIDA’S SPACE COAST is that the launch industry
is booming there once again. SpaceX has
led a sharp increase in launch activity from
Cape Canaveral, winning government
and commercial business. Blue Origin
recently completed a factory for its New
Glenn orbital rocket just outside the gates
of the Kennedy Space Center, and plans
to start launching from Cape Canaveral
by the end of 2020. Other companies
have also expressed interest in launch-
ing from the area in the coming years.
The bad news for Florida’s Space Coast
is that this launch boom is creating some
launches a year — an average of one a
week, with two two-week maintenance
periods — within five years.
However, launches aren’t evenly
spaced. “That’s causing some interesting
concerns for us as far as how we decon-
flict the range and how we schedule the
range,” said Col. Z. Walter Jackim, vice
commander of the 45th Space Wing, in
a luncheon speech at the 45th Space
Congress conference in Cape Canav-
eral Feb. 27.
Jackim said the Air Force is looking
at how close together it can schedule
launches on the range. In recent years,
there have been two launches within
three days of each other. “Right now
10 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
headaches for the companies involved,
as well as for NASA and the U.S. Air Force.
The projected increase in launches in
the coming years, from SpaceX and Blue
Origin as well as United Launch Alliance,
Orbital ATK and others, is putting a strain
on the infrastructure at the Cape. It has
already led to conflicts about scheduling
launches.
2 IN 24 IN THE DRIVE FOR 48The Air Force’s 45th Space Wing, which
operates Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
and the Eastern Range, has been working
to address that surge in launch demand.
Those efforts fall under a strategy dubbed
“Drive for 48,” for the ability to support 48
JAN. 01 JAN. 08 JAN. 15 JAN.22 JAN.29
01.08 01.20 01.31
Falcon 9 | Zuma Atlas 5 | SBIRS GEO-4 Falcon 9 | GovSat-1/SES-16
SPACENEWS.COM | 11
we’re looking at the capability of two
launches in 24 hours,” he said. “If we can
constrain or reduce that time between
launches, we’re going to continue to
open up launch opportunities for more
customers to come in.”
That’s possible now if at least one of
the vehicles uses a new autonomous
flight termination system that reduces
the number of range assets required to
support a launch. So far only SpaceX has
incorporated that system on its Falcon 9
and Falcon Heavy rockets, but Jackim said
there’s interest in getting other vehicles
to adopt the technology.
In his luncheon speech, Jackim billed
this goal as an aspiration, rather than a
specific requirement. “Right now, we’re
just using the 2-in-24 as a goal. It’s kind
of a straw man that we’re chasing to see
if we can do it,” he said.
Yet, even as Jackim was speaking
in a hotel ballroom, range officials and
others at the Cape were looking at one
opportunity to try two launches in less
than 24 hours. As ULA prepared an
Atlas 5 for launch on the afternoon of
March 1 carrying the GOES-S weather
satellite, SpaceX sought approval from
the range to launch a Falcon 9 carrying
a communications satellite shortly after
midnight the same day: a separation of
about 16½ hours. SpaceX’s launch was
previously scheduled for a few days earlier
but postponed by a payload fairing issue.
While the Air Force was interested in
pursuing the back-to-back launches,
ULA and NASA raised questions about
it, according to industry sources. The
timing of the launches meant that the
Atlas 5, which typically rolls out to the
pad the day before a launch, would be
exposed while the Falcon 9 lifted off from
its pad just a few kilometers away. That
left the rocket at risk to potential damage
in the event of a launch failure, as well
as the possibility that the plume could
contaminate the satellite payload.
At a pre-launch press conference for
the GOES-S mission that afternoon at
KSC, the NASA launch manager for the
mission, Tim Dunn, said those issues
put a stop to plans for the back-to-back
launches. “Obviously, we would need
some time to take a look at that to assess
all the risks that would be incurred on
GOES-S as well as the Atlas 5,” he said.
The Atlas 5 with GOES-S launched
as planned on the afternoon of March 1,
while SpaceX waited until after midnight
on March 6 to launch its Falcon 9.
Jackim, returning to the conference
to speak on a panel after that decision
was announced, said the effort to try
two launches in a day was worthwhile
nonetheless. “We will continue to look at
it, and we will get to two in 24,” he said.
OTHER RANGE IMPROVEMENTSThe effort to condense gaps between
launches is not the only initiative at the
Eastern Range to increase its through-
put. Jackim said there are other efforts
underway to deal with two of the most
common reasons for launch delays: range
safety violations and weather.
“As we’re going to 48, we can’t have
scrubs unnecessarily,” he said. “It’s very
important that we preserve our launch
opportunities.”
For range safety, that means a shift in
what happens when ships or planes enter
restricted zones. An example he gave was
when a tugboat with a two-person crew
was spotted in restricted waters ahead of
a launch. In the past, such a ship would
be treated the same as a cruise ship with
thousands on board, but now the Air
Force is looking at each ship, and the
risk to those on board, individually.
FEB. 05 FEB. 12 FEB. 19 FEB. 26 MAR.05
02.06 03.01 03.06
Falcon Heavy | Tesla Roadster Atlas 5 | GOES-S Falcon 9 | Hispasat 30W-6
SPACE COAST
12 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
“We went from measuring the
risk of hitting the boat to actually
causing some sort of casualty,” he said. In
that example, the launch could proceed.
The Air Force is also introducing new
weather tools to provide a three-dimen-
sional view of weather conditions. That
can help meteorologists and launch con-
trollers better see how close any lightning
in the area would be to a rocket’s launch
path, compared to the current approach
of setting limits on how close any light-
ning can be to the launch site.
Another initiative seeks to modernize
the range, from decades-old electronics
used for telemetry to scheduling tools
that rely on whiteboards. That effort is
called the Eastern Range Program for
Innovative Change, or EPIC.
“Actually, we chose the acronym be-
fore we figured out what it stands for,”
admitted Col. Burton Catledge, operations
group commander for the 45th Space
Wing, during a panel discussion at the
Space Congress Feb. 28.
The goal, though, is to live up to that
acronym by making sweeping changes
to the range infrastructure. EPIC includes
about three dozen different projects,
such as mobile telemetry units that can
be moved from pad to pad as needed
and online databases that allow launch
providers to better estimate range costs.
Another part of EPIC is developing a
tool dubbed the “Launch Pad”: a collection
of apps for a tablet that can handle all key
range operations. “I expect in less than a
year that you’ll be able to command and
control the entire Eastern Range with
this tablet,” he said.
FEELING BLUEWhile those improvements can increase
the number of launches at the Cape, com-
panies are finding other challenges with
developing launch sites there.
“While many users are great, and you
realize efficiencies, when you’re trying
to make a business case, many users
can actually slow you down,” said Scott
Henderson, orbital launch site director at
Blue Origin. “Not only is the infrastruc-
ture and the overhead more taxed, but
the day-to-day operations tempo gets
impacted.”
Blue Origin is currently building a
launch facility for New Glenn at Launch
Complex 36, but Henderson said that
construction is affected by other space-
port activities, particular on what are
designated as “critical days” around the
time of a launch. “Part of building is that
you actually have to put a shovel into the
ground,” he said. “On a critical day you
cannot break the surface of the ground.”
“In 10 of the last 12 months, over 50
percent of the work days have been critical
days,” Henderson said. “It’s nearly impossi-
ble to build a project under those kinds of
constraints. We have to figure out a way.”
He added that the basic infrastructure
available at Cape Canaveral left something
to be desired. “We are investing way too
much money in what I would call core
systems: new substations, pipelines, try-
ing to figure out where commodities are
going to come from,” he said. “That’s less
money that’s invested into the really hard
work of developing new and innovative
launch systems.”
COMPETITIONHenderson noted that Blue Origin picked
Florida as the site to both build and launch
New Glenn after an intense competition.
“Florida won a hard battle to get Blue
Origin’s business,” he said, beating out
Texas, Georgia and even North Carolina.
“They were going to change the license
plates to say ‘First in Flight Again.’”
That competition is on the minds
of state officials as they seek to attract
more customers to the spaceport. “We’ve
captured more of the commercial mar-
ket back to the United States,” said Dale
Ketcham, chief of strategic alliances for
Space Florida, during a conference panel
discussion March 1. SpaceX, he noted, has
done that by carrying out commercial
launches that once took place overseas.
However, he added that SpaceX, after
having invested many millions of dollars
upgrading Launch Complex 39A and
repairing Space Launch Complex 40,
is focusing its investments elsewhere.
“They’re now all going to Texas to build
a commercial launch site in Brownsville,”
he said. “Our job is try and keep that from
happening again.”
Ketcham is also concerned about
Camden County, Georgia’s plans for
a commercial launch site. “Georgia is
prepared to offer a commercial launch
site that is going to be as attractive as
Brownsville was, maybe more so,” he
warned.
“We’ve got to continue to innovate,” he
said. “If you’re not innovating and con-
tinuing to be competitive, you’re dying.
You might not know it, but you’re dying.”
In other words, there’s always the
danger the boom times could go bust
again. SN
As ULA prepared an Atlas 5 for launch on the afternoon of March 1 … SpaceX sought approval from the range to launch a Falcon 9 carrying a communications satellite shortly after midnight the same day: a separation of about 16½ hours.
SPACENEWS.COM | 13
ONEW
EB
LEO & MEO BROADBAND
THE WORLD’S BIGGEST, BEST ESTABLISHED
SATELLITE OPERATORS TALK OF BROADBAND
AS AN ENORMOUSLY LUCRATIVE OPPORTU-
NITY. BUT IN TRUTH, NOTHING IS CAUSING
THEM MORE FRUSTRATION.
Demand for ever-faster broadband in-
ternet connections is maxing out today’s
satellites, setting off an industry-wide
stampede toward increasingly powerful
high-throughput satellites (HTS). While
that might sound like a good thing, the
rush to HTS is driving down bandwidth
prices so fast that some fairly low-mile-
age satellites are struggling to keep up.
Seasoned operators, determined to
stay ahead of the curve, are thinking
CALEB HENRY
satellites is about to be tested by the
emerging megaconstellations — nimble
fleets of hundreds or even thousands
of relatively small satellites orbiting the
planet at significantly lower altitudes.
Cheaper to build, less costly to lose one
or two, the low- and medium-Earth-orbit
broadband satellites being built by One-
Web, SpaceX, Telesat and others promise
nearly fiber-optic speeds and global cov-
erage without the small-but-annoying
lag that radio signals suffer during their
72,000-kilometer round trip to geosta-
tionary orbit and back. Though measured
in milliseconds, latency is the bane of
automated stock trades, hardcore gaming
and Skype video chats.
Megaconstellations are not without
twice before investing $200 million or
more in a geostationary broadband sat-
ellite designed to operate at least 15 years.
Factoring in the two to four years it can
take to build and launch a communi-
cations satellite, such a long-lived asset
risks falling behind before it is in orbit.
Big, slow-moving geostationary sat-
ellite projects costing about as much as
Paul Allen’s superyacht or a Marvel super-
hero blockbuster have long dominated
the satellite communications business.
Fifteen-year satellites continue to do the
trick when it comes to the biggest source
of revenue for operators — transmitting
television broadcast signals.
But broadband is a faster animal.
The dominance of big geostationary
CONSTELLATIONCONSTERNATIONDivining what the stars hold in store for broadband megaconstellations
14 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
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LEO & MEO BROADBAND
their own sets of challenges, including
uncertainty about how the fast-mov-
ing broadband market will evolve and
questions about how cheaply satellite
receivers can be put into the hands of the
world’s least served and close the digital
divide (a popular raison d’être for many
of these projects).
Planned for non-geostationary or-
bits, the megaconstellation satellites will
orbit closer to Earth for faster connec-
tions. Those close orbits mean greater
numbers are needed to cover the same
surface area, driving the need for mass
manufacturing and lots of launches. New
types of constellations also meansnew
regulatory approvals from nations where
companies want to do business.
But these hurdles aren’t stopping com-
panies new and old from taking a swing
at LEO and MEO broadband.
According to Northern Sky Research, at
least 10 companies are planning to build
broadband constellations of 100 satellites
or more in non-geostationary-orbits. Most
of these ventures anticipate having their
first-generation constellations in orbit in
the next five years.
Analysts agree that the advent of huge
fleets of small satellites in non-geostation-
ary orbits have the potential to change
the paradigm for satellite internet. But
no one knows exactly how since the
megaconstellations aren’t in orbit yet.
Some satellite operators are hedging
their bets by taking stakes in the new
constellations; others are buying large
communications satellites equipped with
features to make them more flexible and
maximize throughput.
And some are doing both.
What’s an operator to do?Chris Quilty of Quilty Analytics says the
usual metrics for predicting how fast a
satellite will pay back the upfront invest-
ment “are out the window nowadays.”
Armand Musey, president of the Sum-
mit Ridge Group telecom consultancy,
agreed.
“The change is so rapid that five-,
seven- or 10-year satellites for broadband
are essentially all you’d want,” Musey said
“You don’t want a 15- or 20-year broad-
band satellite any more than you want
a 20-year-old laptop.”
Avanti Communications provides a
recent telling example. In December, the
struggling British fleet operator said two
of its still-young satellites — one launched
within the past five years, the other within
the past seven — can barely compete with
only slightly younger systems.
WildBlue is another case in point.
Boasting roughly 400,000 subscribers
and $200 million in revenue when Viasat
bought the company for $570 million
in 2004, those numbers had shrunk
to 100,000 subscribers and maybe $80
million in revenue by 2014, according
to Quilty. WildBlue was a “strategically
important acquisition,” given ViaSat’s
desire to be in the consumer broadband
space, Quilty said, “but hard to see how
they could have possibly generated a fair
rate of return for the satellite.”
Some satellite operators are doubling
down on geostationary broadband
architectures.
Eutelsat is investing in a new satellite
called Quantum that features beams that
can change shape, size and power to
better deliver capacity where and when
it’s needed — a level of adaptability long
sought in the satellite industry (Eutelsat
ordered its first LEO smallsat last week,
but the Tyvak-supplied nanosatellite is
aimed at narrowband, Internet of Things
applications, not broadband).
Global-IP, a recent startup led by a former
Hughes Network Systems executive and
advised by former AsiaSat CEO William
Wade, ordered a 150-gigabits-per-second
satellite from Boeing that’s launching in
2019 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 to connect
users in Africa.
And dueling U.S. satellite broadband
providers Hughes and ViaSat both have
massive geostationary satellites launching
in the early 2020s. — EchoStar 24/Jupi-
ter-3 will deliver half a terabit per second
of network capacity. ViaSat-3 expects to
deliver at least twice that.
Other large operators, including In-
telsat, SES and Telesat, are investing in
constellations of non-geostationary-or-
bit satellite systems built for broadband
connectivity.
The broadband bandwagonOneWeb, founded in 2012 under the
name WorldVu Satellites, took a big leap
ahead in 2015 when it lined up $500 mil-
lion from such heavyweights as Airbus,
Coca-Cola and Virgin Group.
SpaceX grabbed its share of 2015’s
spotlight when news spread it was open-
ing a Seattle factory to build some 4,500
broadband satellites for a constellation
since dubbed Starlink.
In 2016, OneWeb raised another $1.2
billion in an investment round led by
SoftBank. SpaceX, focused on building
and launching rockets, has refused to
say much more about its constellation.
Meanwhile, OneWeb submitted its
A Telesat LEO prototype satellite built by SSTL launched in January on an Indian PSLV rocket.
SPACENEWS.COM | 15
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license application to U.S. regulators,
touching off a spate of me-too filings
from companies wanting the Federal
Communications Commission to know
that they also had plans for delivering
broadband from non-geostationary orbits.
OneWeb’s initial satellites are coming
together at an Airbus factory in France
before production of the balance of 900
satellites shifts to the purpose-built OneWeb
Satellite factory soon to open in Florida.
SpaceX and Telesat already have pro-
totype LEO broadband satellites in orbit.
Telesat’s Phase 1 LEO satellite launched
Jan. 12 on India’s PSLV rocket. SpaceX,
on Feb. 22, orbited two experimental
satellites, Tintin A and Tintin B, on a
Falcon 9 rocket.
OneWeb’s first satellites are slated to
launch in May on an Arianespace-oper-
ated Soyuz rocket.
Come 2019, SpaceX and OneWeb ex-
pect to conduct regular launches to put
their constellations in orbit.
Telesat plans to select a manufacturer
for its constellation of 120 satellites later
this year and start launching them in 2020.
LeoSat is working with Thales Alenia
Space on a plan to produce a network of
78 to 108 satellites.
And more internet constellations are
promised, such as China’s 300-satellite
Hongyan constellation, and Boeing’s
constellation of nearly 3,000 satellites.
Expectations of successNo one thinks every single proposed
constellation is going to reach orbit,
but most analysts agree one or more
broadband constellation will ultimately
pan out. “At least one, but less than five,”
ventured Quilty. “Is there room for two?
I think there is.”
People have different opinions on who
the winners and losers will be.
Tim Farrar, president of the telecom
analyst group TMF Associates, counts the
medium-Earth-orbit O3b system now
owned by SES as the first successful mod-
ern non-geostationary-orbit broadband
system. O3b’s first satellites launched in
2013 ahead of the current rush.
OneWeb, whose May launch will be of
operational satellites instead of prototypes,
is in second place, he said.
“At the moment there is a potential
scramble for who is going to be the
third player between Telesat, LeoSat and
SpaceX,” said Farrar. “It’s probably going
to be clear in the next 12 months which
of those is out ahead.”
The last four satellites in O3b’s first-gen-
eration constellation of 20 satellites are
scheduled to launch in 2019 on an Ar-
ianespace Soyuz. O3b mPower, a sec-
ond-generation system of seven satellites
bringing some 10 terabits of throughput,
are slated to start launching in 2021.
OneWeb anticipates rolling out its
global broadband service in 2019, starting
with Alaska. SpaceX aims to offer limited
service as soon as 2020 and Telesat is
shooting for 2021.
Who cares who’s first?While OneWeb appears to be leading the
pack, being first to market has its pros
and cons, analysts said.
“Being the first to launch a new LEO
broadband constellation has advantages,
possibly to attract rural customers which
OneWeb’s initial satellites are coming together at an Airbus factory in France before production shifts to the OneWeb Satellite factory in Florida.
Hongyan# Satellites: 300Altitude (km): 1,100
Laser Light# Satellites: 12Altitude (km): 10,000
O3b# Satellites: 27Altitude (km): 8,000
LeoSat# Satellites: 108Altitude (km): 1,432
Lucky Star# Satellites: 156Altitude (km): 1,000
SpaceX Starlink# Satellites: 4,425Altitude (km): 1,100-1,325
Samsung# Satellites: 4,600Altitude (km): 1,500-2,000
LEO & MEO Broadband ConstellationsAt least 15 companies have declared their intent to develop broadband satellite constellations in low Earth orbit (LEO) or medium Earth orbit (MEO), according to Northern Sky Research. Most of these companies intend to have their first-generation systems deployed within five years. O3b, which is nearing completion of a 20-satellite constellation begun in 2013, will add seven mPower second-generation broadband satellites starting in 2021.
PROGRESS KEY Constellation builder selected
Launcher(s) identified
Prototype satellite(s) launched
Operational satellite(s) in orbit
Source: Northern Sky Research
16 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
Xinwei# Satellites: 32Altitude (km): N/A
OneWeb# Satellites: 900Altitude (km): 1,200
Telesat LEO# Satellites: 117Altitude (km): 1,000
Commsat# Satellites: 800Altitude (km): 600
Viasat# Satellites: 24Altitude (km): 8,200
Astrome Technologies# Satellites: 600Altitude (km): 1,400
Boeing V-band# Satellites: 2,956Altitude (km): 1,030-1,080
Yaliny# Satellites: 135Altitude (km): 600
SPACENEWS.COM | 17
LEO & MEO BROADBAND
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A camera mounted on Falcon 9’s upper stage shows the deployment of the first of two Starlink demo satellites SpaceX delivered to orbit during the Feb. 22 launch of Spain’s PAZ radar-imaging satellite.
don’t have any broadband connec-
tivity or households with poor quality
internet access,” said Khin Sandi Lynn,
an industry analyst at market-foresight
advisory firm ABI Research. “But it also
has risk such as LTE coverage expansion
or possibility of 5G networks in future.”
AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint announced
at the Mobile World Congress last month
that they will start rolling out 5G, or
fifth-generation wireless networks, to
limited U.S. cities later this year. The
long-awaited upgrade is expected to be
100 to 1,000 times faster than current
4G service.
Lynn noted that early this year the
second-largest cable operator in the U.S.,
Charter Communication, announced it
will be testing the delivery of 5G service to
rural areas — one of the markets that LEO
broadband constellations aim to serve.
Miscalculations about market size
and equipment costs can be deadly, as
ICO and Teledesic found out during the
ill-fated satellite broadband gold rush of
the 1990s.
In the race to equip corporate road
warriors with go-anywhere satellite
phones, Iridium beat rival Globalstar to
orbit by about a year. Iridium also beat
Globalstar to bankruptcy court, filing
for Chapter 11 in 1999. Globalstar hung
on until 2002.
“I don’t think it’s important to be first.
It’s important to get it right,” said Musey.
Both Iridium and Globalstar eventually
emerged from bankruptcy. Globalstar
finished deploying its second-generation
constellation in 2013. Iridium, which got
off to a later start the second time around,
is well on its way to having all of its new
satellites in orbit by year’s end.
Teledesic and ICO weren’t so lucky.
Both collapsed short of the finish line
with no such phoenix-style resurrection.
“This whole idea of a first mover ad-
vantage is a bit overstated,” Musey said.
“It works in certain consumer brand ap-
plications, like opening a McDonalds in a
neighborhood, but I don’t think that’s ever
been an issue in the satellite industry.”
Rather than being an advantage, first
movers could find competitors drafting
behind them, taking advantage of their
trailblazing in technology and regulatory
development to speed their own systems,
Quilty said.
Justifying megaconstellationsThe greater question as to who will suc-
ceed lies in how much demand their
constellations will actually generate.
“If you make a comparison with the
1990s, the biggest issue was that the market
forecasts were dramatically wrong,” said
Farrar. “It wasn’t that they couldn’t build
the satellites or handsets. They made the
technology work, but they didn’t find
the market that they expected. That’s
always the challenge for something big
and new, and it doesn’t matter whether
you are building LEOs or GEOs. When
you are trying to get into a new market,
it’s very difficult to come up with an
accurate market forecast.”
OneWeb and SpaceX have both
highlighted consumer broadband with
an emphasis on connecting large, un-
reached populations to the internet as a
central purpose of their constellations.
Those populations will need low-cost,
easy-to-install user terminals, otherwise
prospective customers will find them-
selves priced out.
Iridium and Globalstar bet big on a
large satellite-telephony market — a much
larger market than actually materialized,
thanks in part to a faster-than-expected
expansion of cellular networks to previ-
ously underserved regions.
Sima Fishman, managing director of
Euroconsult USA, said the current gener-
ation of LEO constellations face similar
issues as some of their 1990s forebearers,
whose ambitious plans sparked a reus-
able launch vehicle boom that went bust.
“The most significant hurdle from our
perspective is establishing credibility that
demand will exist at the prices necessary
to make the business case work,” she said.
A good ground gamePerhaps the biggest variable in calculating
demand is figuring out what consumers
will have to pay for the user terminal—
the receiver and antennas customers
will use to connect to the constellation.
In contrast to geostationary satellites
that always appear to hover at the same
point in the sky, LEO broadband constel-
lations will require antennas capable of
tracking multiple satellites as they orbit
overhead. Such antennas exist. In use
for more than a decade, phased-array
antennas commonly have no moving
SPACENEWS.COM | 19
parts, relying instead on electronically
steered beams to communicate with
satellites. The technology is proven, but
the cost is sky high.
For cheap, abundant satellite broad-
band to succeed, consumers will need
cheap but capable antennas. Companies
such as Kymeta and Phasor Solutions say
more affordable flat-panel antennas are
coming soon, but analysts are quick to
note that they are not here yet — at least
not at price points acceptable to the av-
erage consumer.
“With the enormous amount of capacity
coming online, the only plausible way that
it can be absorbed is that there is a large
consumer adoption,” said Musey. “The
only way you can have a large consumer
adoption is if you have reasonably priced
ground equipment. That’s particularly
true in developing countries, but it’s
also true in the U.S. and most advanced
countries. Consumers are not going to
pay $50,000 or $100,000 or more for a
tracking antenna. To hit a consumer
price point you need to have flat panel
antennas at very low price points.”
In 2015, when Elon Musk first unveiled
SpaceX’s broadband constellation plan,
he said the flat-panel antennas custom-
ers will need to link up with the system
would be inexpensive enough — $100 to
$300 —to be affordable the world over.
Last month, SpaceX acknowledged to
The Wall Street Journal that it doesn’t yet
know how much the terminals will cost.
OneWeb has said it is working with
chipmaker Qualcomm, a OneWeb in-
vestor, on low-cost antennas.
Telesat, in an interview with Space-
News last October, revealed only that the
success of the Telesat LEO constellation
“is not dependent on a big leap in ground
terminal performance and capabilities.”
Consumer confidenceFarrar is among analysts who doubt
consumer broadband will be the big-
gest application for LEO constellations.
Bridging the digital divide is a laudable
goal, but backhaul — using satellites to
help cellular networks to increase cov-
erage and improve service — is an early
market they can dominate with or with-
out cheap antennas.
“If you are backhauling from a cell
tower, then if a terminal costs a few
thousand dollars, that’s not a fundamental
barrier to deploying it because you may
be spending $1,000 a month on capacity,”
Farar said. “If you are providing home
broadband to someone for $70 a month,
then a terminal that costs a few thousand
dollars makes it completely untenable.”
Not every operator is counting on
consumer broadband for success. Intel-
sat, which tried unsuccessfully to merge
with OneWeb last year, is a reseller of
OneWeb capacity for almost every mar-
ket but consumer broadband — in-flight
connectivity, maritime, government net-
works, driverless cars and more. LeoSat,
likewise, is targeting corporations instead
of consumers.
Changing tidesRegardless of whether the non-geosta-
tionary-orbit (NGSO)constellations suc-
ceed, they are already having an impact
on the satellite industry.
From 2014 to 2017, geostationary
satellite orders were well below average,
dropping into the teens before falling
last year to just seven orders worldwide
as operators hedge their bets on what
technology is best.
In addition to the investments Intelsat,
SES and Telesat are making in NGSO ven-
tures, Asia’s largest geostationary satellite
operator, Sky Perfect JSAT took a stake
in LeoSat last year. ViaSat, meanwhile,
has filed FCC paperwork for a constel-
lation of up to 24 satellites operating in
medium Earth orbit.
“A lot of satellite operators are flum-
moxed by the correct choice, and they
are taking steps to stay engaged in NGSO
activity,” said Quilty. “There’s only a hand-
ful of players that seem to have adopted
a wholesale wait and see approach.”
“[I]ndustry players seem to be recogniz-
ing that the megaconstellation approach
to capacity expansion represents a sea-
change in the economics of the satellite
industry,” said Fishman. “We see this rec-
ognition across the traditional value chain,
from manufacturing and launch through
operators and service providers, as well
as customers. We also see stakeholders
such as insurance providers, regulatory
agencies/spectrum administrators, and
the financial community sorting out the
implications.”
Manufacturers are angling for con-
stellation construction contracts by pro-
moting new smallsat platforms. Launch
providers are designing adapters and
deployers for constellations, or building
new rockets specifically sized for dedi-
cated smallsat missions. And operators
of ground-based satellite gateways are
installing new antennas around the
world to provide turn-key solutions for
constellation operators.
Yet even as the entire satellite industry
pivots to LEO broadband as the next big
thing, no one knows for sure what the stars
have in store for today’s constellations.
“It’s not an easy business,” Farrar said.
“All of this is complicated.” SN
“The most significant hurdle from our perspective is establishing credibility that demand will exist at the prices necessary to make the business case work.”
Sima Fishman, Managing director of Euroconsult USA
ST. H
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DIGITAL DIVIDE
Inhabitants of the tiny tropical island
of St. Helena pay through the nose
for internet service that mainlanders
would have considered painfully slow
during the pre-Netflix era.
The British-governed territory depends
on the geostationary satellite Intelsat 23 to
connect its 4,500 residents to the outside
world. That satellite provides the island’s
only internet and international telephone
connection via a single 7.6-meter dish.
Sure South Atlantic, the island’s mo-
nopoly telecommunications provider,
sells data packages ranging from 750
megabytes a month at 1 megabit per sec-
ond for $18 to a maximum 21 gigabytes
per month at 2 megabits per second for
$210. With average wages on the island
being a meager $7,000 a year, the more
expensive packages are out of reach for
most of the island’s inhabitants.
Plus, the entire island shares a 50-megabits-per-second satellite link to the outside world. “That’s the real bottleneck,” said Christian von der Ropp, an independent telecommunications consultant who began campaigning in 2012 to bring high-speed communica-tions to St. Helena. “It’s comparable to dial-up speeds. You can’t Skype reliably and a photo of three to four megabits would take ages to load.”
Von der Ropp is spearheading an initiative to bring St. Helena’s telecom infrastructure into the 21st century. The project involves satellites, but not in a way you might imagine.
Von der Ropp is working with St.
Helena’s government on behalf of the nonprofit A Human Right, which works to bring internet and phone access to developing countries, to invite satellite and teleport operators to establish ground stations on the South Atlantic island as part of a plan to fund an extension of a subsea fiber-optic cable.
MOVING THE CABLESo far, the plan seems to working.
Last year, the island’s government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with South Atlantic Express International Ltd. to build a 50-kilometer offshoot of a planned subsea internet cable to be laid between South Africa and Brazil in 2019.
St. Helena, largely dependent on U.K. aid, expects to receive 21.5 million euros ($26.5 million) from the European Union by May to fund the extension. “We are in the final stages of obtaining European Development funding,” McGinnety said.
With that money, St. Helena will pay South Atlantic Express to alter the route of its main cable and extend a branch to the island.
The actual cable, however, is only about a quarter of the project’s over-all cost. The most expensive piece is capacity. The smallest increment of bandwidth the island can buy is a 200 gigabits per second, far more than the islanders need, von der Ropp said.
20 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
DEBRA WERNER
St. Helena’s cable bill
Kedell Worboys, St. Helena’s U.K. representative, and Nevin Mimica, commissioner for international co-operation and development, sign an agreement Feb. 23 in Brussels concerning the subsea cable project.
The tiny tropical island is looking to an unlikely patron for help paying its subsea cable bill: the satellite industry.
SPACENEWS.COM | 21
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That’s where ground stations come in. St. Helena needs ground station op-erators and firms planning megacon-stellations to help cover the ongoing cost of bandwidth.
With funding from the European Development Fund, “we can build the cable and cover the operational cost for the first years but from then onward, we have a small funding gap which we need to close with the satellite operators leasing capacity,” von der Ropp said. “I’m very confident this will succeed. There’s even a small chance the island could make a small profit on the capacity leasing.”
RUNNING IT TO GROUNDIn all, 14 satellite and ground station
companies have signed letters saying they would be interested in building ground sites on St. Helena if the fiber-optic cable goes through, von der Ropp said, but not all of them are ready to publicize their plans.
Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) could use ground stations on the island to improve service for small satellites launched from the International Space Station, said Katherine Monson, U.S. business development director for KSAT, a Nor-wegian company.
Atlas Space Operations could support launch and early-on orbit operations of satellites sent into or-bit from French Guiana, Florida’s Cape Canaveral or future European space-ports, said Sean McDaniel, founder and chief executive of Atlas Space Operations of Traverse City, Michigan.
Sky and Space Global, a British public company with plans to launch 200 nanosatellites to pro-vide telecommunication
services for equatorial regions, is inter-ested in St. Helena for its proximity to the equator and the fact that the island falls under U.K. laws and regulations, said Meir Moalem, Sky and Space Global chief executive and managing director.
In addition, Spire Global, OneWeb and Laser Light Global have expressed interest in St. Helena, von der Ropp said.
“Laser Light intends to locate one of its planned 100 Ground Node Systems on St. Helena’s as early as 2019 in order to provide a variety of optical services to our international customers,” said Robert Brumley, president and chief executive of the Reston, Virginia, company with plans to send 12 optical communications satellites into medium Earth orbit. Laser Light’s node on St. Helena would serve as a recovery option for cable traffic disrupted as it travels between Latin America and Africa, he added.
Spire spokesman Nick Allain, Spire brand development director, would not confirm the report, saying the company
“doesn’t comment on the location of future ground station sites.” OneWeb spokesperson Chris Torres also declined to comment. According to OneWeb’s Federal Communications Commission
filings, the constellation will rely on a network of about 50 or more gateway earth station antennas lo-cated on the global fiber network to blanket the planet with high speed internet connectivity.
If all goes as planned, the Connect St. Helena campaign could bring high-speed internet to the residents of the remote is-land in 2020 and jobs even sooner. Workers building, operating and maintaining the new ground stations will boost the local economy, von der Ropp said.
“Looking at the overall picture, I think the eco-nomic benefits to the island will be substantial.” SN
St. Helena relies on this C-band dish to connect to the internet via the Intelsat 23 satellite.
St. Helena officials say megaconstellations that lack inter-satellite links could use a gateway on the island to provide coverage across much of the South Atlantic Ocean.
BUDGET ANALYSIS
U.S. Air Force Gen. John “Jay” Raymond.
Air Force is spending more on space, but modernization path still a big question
take steps to establish a more resilient, de-
fendable space architecture.” A STRATCOM
spokesman did not respond to questions on
what is included in the $12.5 billion figure.
At a time when the Air Force is under
political pressure to show it cares about
space, “how you count is a non-trivial
issue,” said Berenson. He noted that
since 2017, when unclassified spending
on space was under $5 billion, the 2019
proposal represents a 48 percent increase.
“It’s a small baseline but a big jump,” said
Berenson. “With the push on the national
defense strategy to prepare better for peer
competitors and contested warfighting
domains, they want to spend a lot more
on next-generation space and harden
the existing capabilities.”
The new space budget shifts funding
from the procurement of satellites to
research and development. Most of the
$2.5 billion space procurement account
— down from $3.4 billion a year ago — is
for big-ticket launches under the Evolved
Expendable Launch Vehicle program. The
Air Force is seeking nearly $1.8 billion for
five launches, which averages $360 million
per launch. The budget also provides $245
million for research and development
towards a new rocket engine.
The pivot is most noticeable in the
Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS)
program, the satellite constellation that
monitors missile launches around the
world. The Air Force increased R&D for a
new missile-warning constellation from
$71 million to $643 million. It ends pro-
curement of SBIRS satellites beyond No.
5 and 6, which already are in production
at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. The
SBIRS procurement account plummets
budget includes aircraft, cybersecurity,
electronic warfare and other items. Ber-
enson believes that space is probably the
biggest single category.
By Avascent’s calculation, unclassified
space spending for 2019 total $7.3 billion,
or $1.2 billion less than the Air Force’s
number. Berenson said the difference is
probably due to the Air Force counting
ground-based equipment associated with
space systems that Avascent includes in
the C4ISR category.
Industry consultant Mike Tierney of
Jacques & Associates also crunched the
numbers and came up with a lower space
total than the Air Force: $7.68 billion.
“There are multiple numbers floating
around,” he said, noting the Air Force total
and a $7.88 billion estimate for the broader
unclassified DoD space budget “is what we
can track back to what is publicly available.”
Late last week, the commander of U.S.
Strategic Command, Gen. John Hyten,
told Congress that a total of $12.5 billion is
in the president’s 2019 budget request “to
In its budget proposal for the coming
year, the U.S. Air Force is trying to send
the same message to foreign adversaries
and critics at home: the service defi-
nitely is not underestimating threats the
United States and its allies face in space.
“The Air Force’s FY-19 budget acceler-
ates our efforts to deter, defend and prevail
against anyone who seeks to deny our ability
to freely operate in space,” Gen. John “Jay
Raymond, commander of Air Force Space
Command, said in a statement.
The unclassified space budget the
Air Force unveiled in February includes
$8.5 billion for investments in new sys-
tems — $5.9 billion in the research and
development accounts, and $2.6 billion
for procurement of satellites and launch
services, according to a service official. The
2019 request is 7.1 percent more than the
Air Force sought for 2018. Over the next
five years, the Air Force projects to invest
$44.3 billion in space systems — $31.5
billion in research and development, and
$12.8 billion in procurement. That would
mark an 18-percent increase over the $37.5
billion five-year plan submitted last year.
And there are additional space-related
investments in the black world. “We know
that classified spending is increasing, and
that bodes well for space overall,” said
Doug Berenson, managing director of
the consulting firm Avascent.
Avascent estimates the Pentagon bud-
geted $48.7 billion for classified systems
in 2019, compared to $43 billion in 2017.
Congress has not yet appropriated funding
for 2018, so Avascent compared the new
proposal with 2017 levels. The classified
22 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
U.S
> AI
R FO
RCE
SANDRA ERWIN
SOURCE: JACQUES & ASSOCIATES
DoD SPACE BUDGET
SPACENEWS.COM | 23
from $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2018 to $138
million in 2019. Research and develop-
ment for a next-generation system gets
a boost from $382 million to $703 million
The Air Force also is transitioning
the Global Positioning System. The plan
is to start a new program to succeed
the block of GPS 3 satellites currently in
production by Lockheed Martin. The Air
Force intends to select a new design and
seek new competitors. The budget adds
more money for future GPS 3 research
and development — from $1 billion to
$1.4 billion — and cuts procurement from
$101 million to $85 million.
The Air Force is boosting R&D for
protected satellite communications. Re-
search on a future replacement for the
Advanced Extremely High Frequency
(AEHF) constellation is getting a big
bump from $315 million to $677 million,
whereas procurement goes down from
$138 million to $91 million. Four satellites
have been delivered by Lockheed Martin,
and two more are in production.
The budget funds the 10th and final
Wideband Global SATCOM satellite. The
2019 request includes nearlu $50 million
to complete the Air Force Commercial
Satellite Communications Pathfinder
projects, which are exploring ways to
work with commercial fleet operators to
reduce cost and improve satcom resilience.
Berenson cautioned that the Air Force
moving money out of procurement into
R&D should not be read as a sign of some
radical change in direction. “Programs
have ebbs and flows” as satellites age and
new ones have to be developed. “That’s
likely the case with navigation satellites
and evolved SBIRS,” he said. “A lot of this
is about existing programs.”
The takeaway is that the Air Force “hasn’t
yet figured out what its next generation of
major space procurements is really going
to look like,” said Berenson. “They are still
trying to figure how much money they
are really going to have long term. The
2019 budget is a big increase but it’s not
going to go on forever. They’re trying to U.S
> AI
R FO
RCE
SOURCE: JACQUES & ASSOCIATES
get a handle on what they can expect.”
Another issue for DoD is how to work
differently with the private sector, said
Berenson. “There is so much dynamism
in this industry. New players are disrupt-
ing the market and coming up with new
concepts on how to provide capabilities,
he said. “I’m not sure the department is
yet in a position to describe the end-to-
end plan for what they are going to be
acquiring. They are still working on what
the architecture ought to look like.”
Raymond noted in his statement
that increased spending in R&D shows
a deliberate effort to move to next-gen-
eration systems.
“We are demonstrating our commit-
ment to innovation, rapid acquisition and
to building more defendable, resilient and
capable space systems,” he said.
“We ultimately seek to deter a conflict
that extends into space. However, we
must be ready to fight and win if deter-
rence fails.” SN
2008
5.95
-7.5% -5.7% -6.8% -3.6%
+33.3%+29.2% +30.0%
+2.2%
8.25 7.366.45 8.23 5.89 5.73 5.83 5.99 7.08 7.88 7.81 8.28 8.197.30
2012
2017
2022
2010
AIR FORCE
$7.68B(97.54%)
ARMY
$0.09B(1.14%)
MDA
$0.05B(0.68%)
NAVY
$0.05B(0.61%)
DISA
$0.00B(0.03%)
2014
2019
2009
2013
2018
2023
2011
2016
2021
2015
2020
The U.S. Defense Department’s 2019 budget request includes an estimated $7.88 billion for unclassified space programs, according to Jacques & Associates. Space, according to Avascent, likely receives the biggest share of DoD’s estimated $43 billion classified budget.
BUDGET BY MILITARY DEPARTMENT
COMPOUND ANNUAL GROWTH RATE, 2017–2023 PER TECHNOLOGY
$4B
All other space
programsWeather Satellites
Launch Infrastruc-
ture
Commu-nications Satellites
Various Space R&D Programs
Space Launch
Vehicles
Space Surveillance
& Control
$5B
$6B
$7B
$8B
$9B
Total unclassifi ed DoD space budget for FY-19: $7.88B
6.30
Navigation Satellites
ISR Satellites
-19.6%SOURCE: AVASCENT
sn_03.12.18_pg22,23_DoDBudget.indd 23 3/9/18 1:19 PM
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ON NATIONAL SECURITY Sandra Erwin
The hand-wringing continues
at the Pentagon over how to
respond to Chinese and Russian
missile advances. The latest line
of thinking is that the U.S. needs more
sophisticated and more discriminating
sensors that can fill in blind spots in
current air and missile defense systems.
And that the best approach would be to
place those sensors on satellites in space.
With U.S. adversaries on a path toward
faster and stealthier missiles, “sensor cov-
erage is a very big deal,” said Air Force
Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, director of the
Missile Defense Agency.
It’s simple, he said. “If you can’t see it,
you can’t shoot.” The reality is that current
anti-missile defenses have gaps. Greaves
said his agency is “looking to move the
sensor architecture to space, and use that
advantage of space in coordination with
our ground assets to remove the gaps.”
To respond to hypersonic threats, the
architecture is completely different to
one designed to counter a ballistic missile
threat, Greaves explained during a pre-
sentation at the McAleese Credit Suisse
defense program conference. “That’s why
the sensor layer is absolutely critical,” he
insisted. “You will continue to see MDA
advocate for a space sensor layer.”
Meanwhile, experts like Tom Karako,
director of the missile defense project at
the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, recoil at these statements.
The space sensors could have been
in orbit and in operation by now except
Missed opportunities in missile defense
the next level. “We’ve allowed ourselves
to get into this paralysis with the analyses
of alternatives,” said LaPlante, who is now
vice president of The MITRE Corp..
“The decision to spend money, that’s
the hard part,” said LaPlante.
Former Pentagon budget official Jamie
Morin, now vice president of The Aerospace
Corporation, said the space tracking and
surveillance system was a “victim of tim-
ing.” Although DoD had already invested
more than $200 million, it needed to cut
programs when sequestration started. “It
became a bill payer,” said Morin.
Karako said it is disappointing that this
program was not given the importance it
deserved. The U.S. homeland, deployed
military forces and allies increasingly will be
at risk if current defenses are not improved.
“Combining terrestrial radars below with
infrared and electro-optical eyes orbiting
above would dramatically help interceptors
find their target,” he noted.
Hyten told the House Armed Services
strategic forces subcommittee that the
supplemental budget request for fiscal
year 2018 included over $10 million to “be-
gin the pursuit of that capability.” He said
the Air Force has a budget line under the
missile warning sensor technology for $42
million to build demonstration capabilities
to explore space-based sensors.
But Hyten cautioned that money alone
will not magically produce the space sensor
layer. He said the Air Force and MDA have
to get together to work out requirements
and specific concepts for how to use space
and the infrared element of space and
“come into the Congress next year with a
fully integrated program to do the missile
warning missions, the missile defense mis-
sions, the threat characterization missions,
all those pieces together.”
Hyten said he has “advocated for that
capability for a long time,” he said. “We
need to move quickly.” Decisions will be
made this year, he said, “on where we’re
going in the future.” SN
EVERYONE SAYS THE U.S. NEEDS MISSILE-TRACKING
SENSORS IN SPACE, BUT WILL DOD MAKE IT HAPPEN?
SPACENEWS.COM | 25
they were derailed by indecision, Karako
said. Each of the past five administrations
planned for space-based infrared sensors
as a key component of a missile defense
architecture, at least on paper, but noth-
ing was ever deployed, he said at a recent
CSIS conference.
The Pentagon has space-based infrared
satellites in high orbit for strategic warn-
ing that a missile has launched, but once
the motors stop burning, other sensors
are required to track the missile’s trajec-
tory more precisely. That now is done
with ground and sea-based radars. Two
experimental satellites called the Space
Tracking and Surveillance System are
on orbit. The program was conceived as
a constellation of up to 12 satellites, but it
was terminated after two.
Karako wonders if the Trump adminis-
tration will be the sixth to be “emphatically
committed to paper satellites.”
Greaves agrees with Gen. John Hyten,
commander of U.S. Strategic Command,
that the Pentagon has to stop studying this
and start building. Karako expects the soon-
to-be-released Ballistic Missile Defense
Review will make a definitive statement.
Ground- and sea-based radars are im-
portant assets but a modern global missile
defense needs a space sensor layer for
“persistent missile tracking and discrim-
ination,” said Karako.
Former assistant secretary of the Air
Force for acquisition, Bill LaPlante, said
the space-based tracking technology has
been analyzed to death but not taken to
What would it take for SoftBank to invest in SpaceX?
The public has become more aware
of space over the past several weeks.
The awareness has been brought
about by the masterful publicity of
Elon Musk and SpaceX, with the company
having recently performed its first launch of
a Falcon Heavy rocket—their largest rocket to
date—carrying a test payload of Musk’s red
Tesla Roadster with a dummy in the driver’s
seat and David Bowie playing on the car ste-
reo. Musk’s long-term ambitions for SpaceX
are lofty; he wants to colonize Mars. However,
there is a somewhat less lofty, but equally im-
portant vision for SpaceX in the nearer-term:
providing global Internet access via thousands
of satellites, launched by SpaceX rockets. This
plan, according to Musk, will help to fund the
company’s Mars ambition.
Competing with SpaceX in this goal of
global internet via satellite are a handful of
companies. The most noteworthy of these
companies by far is OneWeb, which itself has
raised well over $1 billion in funding, largely
from the SoftBank Vision Fund, a $93 billion
tech fund. SoftBank’s ambitions for OneWeb
are likewise greater than just satellite internet,
with the company intent on building out a
global Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure
that connects billions of devices to a central
location, bringing about an artificial intelligence
(AI) revolution of sorts that the company refers
to as “Singularity.” Other companies looking
to address this market, albeit with less fund-
ing and a narrower business model, include
startup satellite operator LeoSat, established
geostationary operator Telesat, and China’s
state-owned space industry.
The proposed global satellite internet con-
stellations are expensive propositions, with
SpaceX’s proposed constellation expected to
cost on the order of $10 billion or more, and
OneWeb expecting to spend $3 billion. The
actual cost could ultimately be higher for
several reasons, as will be discussed below.
These projects are being funded by the two
main players in different ways. OneWeb has
raised in the neighborhood of $2 billion across
several funding rounds from SoftBank, Qual-
comm, Coca-Cola, Bharti Airtel and others.
SpaceX, on the other hand, is counting on
proceeds from its launch business, as well as
Musk’s personal wealth. If LEO broadband proves
to be anything like the ride-hailing economy
where Uber’s ubiquity hasn’t translated into
profitability, there will be billions of dollars
spent in the coming several years getting these
businesses—literally and figuratively—off the
ground. This is where it gets interesting.
A business built on burning cash is often
a battle of who has the deepest pockets. On a
totally level playing field, Musk and SoftBank
CEO Masayoshi Son (Masa, for short) have
roughly the same sized pockets; both are
worth $20 billion, give or take. But this is not
an even playing field. Both Masa and Musk
have other companies and other ambitions.
Musk’s biggest company to this point is
Tesla, which lost $770 million in the final three
months of 2017. Tesla, at heart, is a technol-
ogy company in super-fast growth phase.
The all-electric cars don’t guzzle fuel, but the
company that builds them is burnsinhplenty
of cash. Whether or not Tesla is ultimately
hugely successful is irrelevant in the here and
now. Today, the company is losing roughly
$50 million per week.
Masa, conversely, controls several highly
leveraged telecom ventures in mature mar-
kets that produce massive amounts of cash,
namely SoftBank Telecom and Sprint. The
the SoftBank group saw net income in the
range of $3-5 billion over the past few years,
with a spike $12 billion spike in 2016. Beyond
this, Masa sits at the helm of the Vision Fund,
If SpaceX pulls out ahead of OneWeb in the LEO broadband game…it might very well make sense for Masa to try to invest in SpaceX.
COMMENTARY Blaine Curcio
26 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
which still has tens of billions of dollars in
capital that can be deployed on relatively
fast notice. Might Masa invest some of
this money into SpaceX?
This proposal is not as crazy as it may
first seem. Masa has pulled a similar
trick in the ride-hailing industry, with
investments in all the major ride-hail-
ing companies, and a subsequent push
towards consolidation and cooperation,
rather than competition. If SpaceX pulls
out ahead of OneWeb in the LEO broad-
band game—or if both companies start
to rapidly acquire subscribers and there
appears to be a very long, drawn-out,
expensive fight in the cards—it might
very well make sense for Masa to try to
invest in SpaceX, or for the companies
to cooperate in some other way.
Such a move could certainly be ex-
acerbated by a cash crunch at any of
Musk’s other companies. If Tesla con-
tinues to miss production deadlines and
starts to see customers ask for refunds
on their Model 3 deposits, for instance,
or if various governments start to taper
off subsidy programs that have up to this
point made Tesla’s more affordable in
some, this could trigger a cash crunch.
Likewise, while SpaceX is believed to
be cash-flow positive at this point, and
is fast-becoming a leader in its industry,
the launch business is notoriously tricky,
and the company has not been without its
launch failures. A few unlucky launches
could trigger an adverse reaction from
existing customers, and with each launch
costing in the tens of millions of dollars,
even a few canceled launches would
make a dent.
Ultimately, for a SpaceX/OneWeb tie-up to occur, several things would need to happen, probably in tandem:
1. Both would likely need to have some initial traction on their business models, including getting satellites into orbit, securing landing rights, and actually getting subscribers onto their network.
2. SpaceX would need to experience a cash crunch of some kind, which could be caused by internal or external factors.
3. The industry would likely need to turn to a subsidy business model. If, for example, OneWeb and SpaceX started subsidizing cheap satellite ground equip-ment in an attempt to win market share and subscribers, this would significantly increase the rate of cash burn. Rather than going for a war of attrition where both companies lose billions, Masa and Musk may decide to call a truce.
4. There would likely need to be some apparent division among the two com-panies’ core markets. Didi and Uber, the world’s two biggest ride-hailing
companies by a wide margin, both list SoftBank as a significant shareholder. The two companies have clearly di-vided markets: Uber controls the U.S. market, Didi controls the China mar-ket. In Southesat Asia, it’s GrabTaxi, which is partially owned by Didi and SoftBank. In Brazil, it’s Didi-owned 99. And in India, it’s Ola Cabs, part of the SoftBank group. The biggest reason for this clear demarcation of battle lines is the fact that SoftBank owns a stake in all of these companies.
The global satellite internet market is
still in its infancy, with no constellations in
orbit now, and with large question marks
surrounding the business models that will.
The only real certainty now is that these
businesses are going to cost billions of
dollars just to roll out, and are fighting
it out in an industry that may involve
massive subsidies and thus billions more
in spend just to win market share. In a
battle of who has the deepest pockets, it’s
always hard to go against the man with
the nearly 12-figure tech fund, even if
his opponent is basically Iron Man. SN
BLAINE CURCIO IS AN INDEPENDENT
CONSULTANT SPECIALIZING IN THE SPACE
AND SATELLITE TELECOMMUNICATIONS
INDUSTRIES. HE SPENT FIVE YEARS WITH
INDUSTRY CONSULTANCY NORTHERN SKY
RESEARCH, WHERE HE HEADED THE SATELLITE
FINANCE PRACTICE.
SPACENEWS.COM | 27
FLICKR
.COM
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son (left) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (right) are both worth roughly $20 billion on paper, but Masa’s telecom ventures generate massive amounts of cash while Musk’s biggest company, Tesla, is still losing money.
SHUTT
ERST
OCK
Balancing terrestrial 5G and satellite 5G needs for international spectrum harmonization
We are in an exciting time for tele-
communications services as 5G
is on the horizon and will begin
being deployed by the end of the
decade. The introduction of 5G services will
bring users globally the ability to have true
anytime, anywhere capabilities to support a
myriad of user devices and applications never
imagined. 5G will be a network of networks in
the truest sense of the word. This network will
be comprised of competing communications
technologies, whether terrestrial mobile, sat-
ellite, fixed microwave, or even high altitude
COMMENTARY Jennifer A. Manner
28 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
platforms, among others. Because of the an-
ticipated high demand for capacity, each of
these services will need access to adequate
spectrum to operate as they will be critical
to the network performing as needed and to
reach all users. However, since the required
spectrum remains a scarce resource, we must
find ways for the different operators to share
spectrum where possible, understanding that
in some cases, primary use of spectrum is
required by one service.
In determining how spectrum is shared
among the different services, it is important to
SPACENEWS.COM | 29
understand how international harmonization
plays into this determination. International
harmonization occurs at the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) at its World
Radiocommunication Conferences (WRCs),
which are held every three to four years. Through
the ITU WRC process, spectrum allocations
and regulations on the use of spectrum on a
global and regional basis.
For some period of years, countries have
sought identification of spectrum for interna-
tional mobile telephony (IMT) services. While
having no regulatory impact, such identifica-
tions provide guidance for use of the spectrum
by terrestrial and satellite IMT services, as ap-
propriate. The current WRC Agenda for the
2019 Conference has identified several bands
under WRC 2018 Agenda Item 1.13 for possible
identification for terrestrial IMT-2020 (also
known as 5G). These bands include: 24.25-
27.5 GHz, 37-40.5 GHz, 42.5-43.5 GHz, 45.5-
47 GHz, 47.2-50.2 GHz, 50.4-52.6 GHz, 66-76
GHz and 81-86 GHz (Proposed IMT Bands).
Other bands (31.8-33.4 GHz, 40.5-42.5 GHz
and 47-47.2 GHz) are being considered for
co-primary allocation to the mobile service
and identification as well to the terrestrial
component of IMT.
Any terrestrial identification for IMT would
result in the use of these bands for mobile IMT-
2020 services. This means that the deploy-
ments would likely be dense including user
terminals and base stations operating in the
same band. Many of these deployments will
be based on small cell topology. Although the
Proposed IMT Bands are or may be allocated to
the mobile service (MS), many of these bands
are also shared on a co-primary basis with
other services, including the fixed satellite
service (FSS). While there are some regulatory
provisions to enable sharing, both the FSS and
MS plans for these bands were not developed
at the time of the allocation. Accordingly, the
current international regulations do not pro-
vide sufficient protections to enable sharing
among the services (satellite or terrestrial)
being planned for these bands.
Accordingly, it is highly likely that use of
these bands by one or the other service to
support 5G may cause harmful interference
into the other radio service(s) operating in the
band. It makes sense then for the next WRC
in 2019 (WRC-19) to adopt protections for ei-
ther or both planned uses of these bands so
the bands can be used on a non-harmful in-
terference basis globally, or at least regionally.
Such protections may also require dedicating
certain bands to one primary use.
If such actions are not taken internationally,
users will have to work on a country-by-country
basis to obtain the protections they require for
their use of the bands or face potential harmful
interference. This is particularly concerning
since many countries simply adopt the ITU
Radio Regulations for their domestic rules.
Accordingly, if there are no protections/reg-
ulations internationally, there could be chaos
since domestic regulations may not be adopted.
This means the spectrum will not be used as
efficiently as possible, denying users of access
to 5G services.
Despite this risk, some ITU participants are
urging that the ITU at WRC-19 simply identify
all of the Proposed IMT Bands for the terrestrial
deployment of IMT on a global basis with the
adoption of any regulations that would provide
protections for additional uses of these same
frequency bands. This approach would provide
broad tuning ranges for terrestrial 5G. These
advocates argue that countries that want to
enable the use of these frequency bands for
other uses could do this on a country by country
basis or on a regional basis, preferably out of
the WRC process. This would provide terrestrial
operators and manufacturers, including chip
set manufacturers, with the ability to capture
economies of scale across the word.
However, this approach would result in
the unavailability of some if not all of these
bands for FSS, including for 5G services. FSS
COMMENTARY Jennifer A. Manner
30 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
JENNIFER MANNER IS THE SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
OF REGULATORY AFFAIRS AT ECHOSTAR CORP. AND
AN ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF LAW AT GEORGETOWN
UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER. SHE IS ALSO THE
PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE US ITU ASSOCIATION,
CHAIR OF THE NETWORK SERVICE WORKING GROUP
OF ESOA AND A BOARD MEMBER OF THE SATELLITE
INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION.
services are inherently global, so unlike
terrestrial services, cannot so easily account
for national differences. First, communications
satellites serve multiple countries. Accordingly,
if spectrum use for FSS in the above 24 GHz
bands is made on a country by country basis,
it will require all bands to be supported on the
satellite so that they have access to sufficient
spectrum to support the capacity demands of
users. However, unlike terrestrial base stations
and user equipment, satellites have limits on
weight that they can launch into space. Critical
components, including antenna, feeds, cavity
filters and wave guilds and optimized for peak
performance in the particular frequency bands
to be operated at. Each additional frequency
band that is added to a satellite adds weight,
cost, and complexity. There is a technical limit
on the size of a satellite that can be launched
into space. Having to include all the bands
will make the satellite too large to launch and
too costly to build.
In addition, incorporating tunable range
on board the satellite requires introduction
of expensive technologies not yet proven
for space operation. Further, this may result
in a dramatic reduction in the lifespan of
such satellites, and change the economics of
commercial satellite communications in an
unacceptable manner.
Further, the shape of satellite beams will
not conform to the territory of each country,
as it is limited by the antenna technology;
antenna beam forming cannot achieve that
level of precision, either from the vast distance
of geosynchronous orbit or from a constantly
moving NGSO platform. Accordingly, when
neighboring countries uses different bands, it
will be extremely difficult to limit cross-border
interference from the satellite system.
And of equal importance, the lack of certainty
as to the availability of spectrum to operate will
make it impossible for the business commu-
nity to invest in such expensive projects as
regional or global satellite networks.
This means that having different protec-
tions and operational limits in each coun-
try will make it operationally difficult, if not
impossible, to provide a wide area coverage
type of satellite solution which is critical to
support 5G over satellites.
Accordingly, adopting tuning ranges in-
ternationally for the frequency bands above
24 GHz, without adequate protections for
satellite systems operating in these ranges on
an international level, will effectively preclude
the use of these bands by global or regional
satellite systems, whether non-geostationary
orbit (NGSO) or geostationary orbit (GSO). It is
unclear that countries will adopt the necessary
technical protections, since many nations
rely on the ITU for their technical expertise.
Further, the additional weight that would be
required on a satellite, as well as technical and
operational complexity of operating a satel-
lite that has to adjust to differing bands and
protection criteria on a country by country
basis, is not realistic from either a technical or
cost perspective. Satellites cannot physically
localize their emissions (nor restrict where
they can accept interference from) to areas
defined to the precision of a national border.
The smallest beam diameter in any current-
ly-conceived commercial satellite system is
on the order of 100 miles.
Every satellite beam will, in general, cross a
country border. Every pair of adjacent countries
must therefore agree on the satellite spectrum
to be used or the satellite cannot be used in
that border region at all in either country. The
only logical solution is for all countries glob-
ally or at least on a regional basis, to agree on
protections for satellite use in certain bands
and for user terminals, primary use at the
upcoming WRC-19. Failure to do so will mean
that true 5G is not delivered to all the world’s
population. SN
Every satellite beam will, in general, cross a country border. Every pair of adjacent countries must therefore agree on the satellite spectrum to be used.
SPACENEWS.COM | 31
ON THE HORIZON
DATE EVENT PLACE DATE EVENT PLACE
12-15 Satellite 20182018.satshow.com
Washington, D.C.
13-15Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposiumastronautical.org/events/goddard/
Greenbelt, MD
28-29 Paris Space Weekparis-space-week.com Paris, France
3-5 Space 2.0infocastinc.com/event/space-2-0/
Silicon Valley, CA
3-5 IAA Regional Meeting Denver, CO
9-12 Earth and Space 2018earthspaceconf.mst.edu Cleveland, OH
16-19 Space Symposiumspacesymposium.org
Colorado Springs, CO
APRIL
21-23 Global Space Applications Conferencewww.glac2018.org
Montevideo, Uruguay
22-24 Space Tech Expo 2018www.spacetechexpo.com Pasadena, CA
24-27International Space Development Conferenceisdc.nss.org/2018/
Los Angeles, CA
28-014S Symposium (Small Satellites Systems & Services)atpi.eventsair.com/QuickEventWebsite-Portal/4s2018/4s
Sorrento, Italy
MAYMARCH
14 IAA Academy Dayiaaweb.org/content/view/721/948/ Pasadena, CA
14-22 42nd COSPAR Scientific Assemblyiaaweb.org/content/view/721/948/ Pasadena, CA
15-16 Satellite & Space Missions Conferencesatellite.conferenceseries.com Rome, Italy
JULY
4-9 Small Satellite Conferencesatellite.conferenceseries.com Logan, UT
AUGUST
15-16 Space Forumwww.spaceforum.com
Luxembourg City
15-17 IAA SciTech Forum 2018 Moscow, Russia
MAY
21-234th IAA Conference on Dynamics and Control of Space Systems (DYCOSS)dycoss2018.com
Changsha, China
16-18 44th Aerospace Mechanisms Symposiumaeromechanisms.com Cleveland, OH
FOUST FORWARD Jeff Foust
Whither space technology (again)
Technology Mission Directorate,” said Rep. Ed
Perlmutter (D-Colo.) at the hearing.
Perlmutter submitted for the record a letter from
Bobby Braun, a former NASA chief technologist
who is now dean of the engineering school at the
University of Colorado, critical of the proposed
shift. Braun said he was concerned merging space
technology into exploration would mean even “a
small hiccup” in development programs would
be paid from technology budgets.
Focusing space technology work on exploration,
he said, would hurt science and other missions
that have depended on innovations developed by
the space program. “This proposed change will
ultimately cut off this critical technology pipeline
and lead to an agency that is left behind in the
space arena,” Braun warned.
Another former NASA chief technologist also
weighed in. “If Space Technology is dismantled or
moved, the cross-cutting innovations will wither
on the vine and will be the first to be sacrificed when
budget overruns or future mandates from OMB force
funding to be redirected,” wrote Mason Peck of Cor-
nell University in a separate letter to the committee.
A review of the budget shows why they are
concerned. One example is Flight Opportunities,
a program that has spent $10–15 million a year
flying technology demonstration payloads in a
variety of fields on parabolic aircraft and subor-
bital vehicles. Starting in 2019, though, the pay-
loads it flies will “align with NASA’s Exploration
Campaign objectives,” according to the proposal.
If those concerns sound familiar, they should:
both Braun and Peck note in their letters the same
thing happened in the mid-2000s, when NASA
made sweeping changes to its technology pro-
grams to focus on the Constellation exploration
program. Both use the same word in their letters to
describe those changes that, they argue, hobbled
technology work at NASA for years: “eviscerated.”
At the hearing, Lightfoot said he was aware
of concerns about technology funding being
siphoned into operational programs, and argued
there were internal safeguards in place to prevent
that from happening.
“There’s still some cross-cutting budget in there,”
he said. “It’s just the majority will be focused on
exploration.” But to many in space technology,
there’s a foreboding sense of déjà vu. SN
There was plenty in NASA’s fiscal year 2019 budget request for people to praise
or criticize. The proposal includes plans
to end direct NASA funding of the In-
ternational Space Station by 2025 and create an
“Exploration Campaign” to support robotic and
human missions to the moon. The budget pro-
posal, surprisingly, seeks to cancel the WFIRST
space telescope and, less surprisingly, several Earth
science missions and NASA’s education office,
which were also on the chopping block last year.
Another change in the budget request, though,
attracted less attention. NASA wants to reorga-
nize its technology programs by doing away with
space technology as a standalone account in the
budget. Instead, its initiatives would be combined
with several exploration-related programs under
a new Exploration Research and Technology
program, part of what the budget now calls Deep
Space Exploration Systems that includes SLS,
Orion and other exploration programs.
NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot,
testifying before the House space subcommittee
March 7, said the change is intended to link those
technology programs to NASA’s exploration ef-
forts, while giving them more resources.
“If you look at the total budget, it’s actually
a better budget for technology than we had as
a standalone mission directorate, and it will be
more aligned and focused with what we want
to do,” he said. The budget proposes $1 billion
for Exploration Research and Technology, while
those same programs, be they in space technology
or exploration, received $826.5 million in 2017.
Others, though, aren’t so sure the changes
are beneficial. “There is an emphasis on explo-
ration, but it seems to be at the expense of a lot
of the other missions, one of which is the Space
A PERENNIAL NASA BILLPAYER IS ABOUT TO LOSE
SOME BUDGET VISIBILITY
32 | SPACENEWS 03.12.18
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