News Analysis

By Bruce Elbert

Austin, Tex., May 1, 2025--Here they are: WWWWWM – the five Ws and the One H – it stands for those familiar questions: who, what, where, when, why and how. You can ask Google or ChatGPT to define these and you’ll get some pretty good generic answers. These are the standard questions that according to journalistic practice should be answered by any article, preferably the lead paragraph. For our industry, these simple questions are not simple to answer, whether as a business or as a strategy:

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., April 28, 2025 – A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the Kuiper-1 mission for Amazon’s Project Kuiper lifted off on April 28 at 7:01 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Kuiper 1 launch marks the beginning of full-scale deployment of the Kuiper constellation and a new chapter in the commercial launch industry as Amazon partners with ULA to deliver a majority of its advanced satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO).

Flagstaff, Ariz., April 24, 2025–Katalyst Space Technologies has announced its acquisition of Atomos Space, a strategic move to accelerate and expand its in-space servicing capabilities.

Copenhagen, Denmark, April 8, 2025 – Cobham Group has signed an agreement to sell Cobham Satcom to an investment company, Solix Group. Cobham Satcom provides radio and satellite communications solutions and services for the maritime and land segments, delivering business- and mission-critical connectivity to a broad range of service providers, enterprises, and government customers.

Roma, Italy, April 4, 2025 - Space logistics and orbital transportation comapny D-Orbit, and Planetek Group, a provider of Earth Observation (EO), geospatial analytics, and mission software, announce a strategic business combination (merger) during an event held at the Sala degli Arazzi of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, in the presence of Minister Adolfo Urso.

MarketBrief Report on the Military Satellite Market sponsored by Orbital Connect

Featuring:

Trends on the Military Satellite Market by Elisabeth Tweedie

Interview with Orbital Connect Co-Founders Krasimir Terziev and Bobby Kirchev

To read or download the pdf of full report click here.

The April 2025 issue of the Satellite Executive Briefing is now available.  Featuring:

The Military Satellite Market by Elisabeth Tweedie

Geo Satellites: Old Faithful by Bruce Elbert

Video via Satellite is Dead. Long Live Video via Satellite! by Robert Bell

Company Spotlight: Integrasys

Better Satellite World: Bringing Data Home from the Ends of the Earth

Plus  Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Trends, Executive Moves, Vital Stats and many more. Click here to read or download the file

By Bruce Elbert

Austin, Tex., April 2, 2025 - With all of the activity and associated hype of broadband LEO constellations, one wonders if there is anything left to say about GEO satellites and applications. I chose Old Faithful, that amazing geyser in Yellowstone National Park, as the theme for this article because it, like dependable geostationary platforms, can be relied upon to simply do its thing. Old Faithful is powered by natural causes much the way that a GEO converts sunlight into dependable services to and by fixed positions on the earth. It’s like man-made bridges such as Hells Gate in New York or the Golden Gate in San Francisco: little maintenance is needed, and for a GEO, orbital operations are the simplest of space missions.

New York City, NY, April 2, 2025 - For 30 million years, the North and South Poles have been kingdoms of ice and snow.  But today, there is nowhere on Earth more at risk from climate change. The Antarctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Arctic temperatures are rising even faster.

By Blaine Curcio

Cairo, Egypt, May 2, 2025--The African continent can often be an afterthought in high-tech, capital-intensive industries such as space and satellite communications, but any way you slice it, the coming decades are going to see strong growth from this region. With a large and growing percentage of the world’s young people, dozens of fast-growing economies, and newly-established space agencies popping up every few months, Africa is a booming frontier market for the global space industry. At the same time, the region’s more well-established satcom sector faces uncertainty, but opportunity, from changing market dynamics.