Author: Ronald van der Breggen

Buying a new battery for your car will set you back around $100. If you need to buy one for a small airplane, you’re easily looking at $500 for the same sort of battery. Why? If a plane falls from the sky the impact is much bigger than when a car breaks down by the...

Until recently our industry thought that it could make money by connecting the unconnected. As a result, Non-Geostationary (NGSO) operators and startups have been struggling to find profits and diverted strategic plans from providing rural broadband to supporting government and military applications and connecting businesses and cruise ships. SES’ O3b and OneWeb are perfect examples...

On December 23, shortly before the holidays, I received a press release that headlined: “European space and digital players to study build of EU’s satellite-based connectivity system.” As part of this 7 million euro ($8.5 million) deal, the European Commission is asking Airbus, Arianespace, Eutelsat, Hispasat, OHB, Orange, SES, Telespazio, and Thales Alenia Space to...

It is not easy to build a successful Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation. Aside from the technical and regulatory challenges, there are many business and financing issues as well. These issues have already caused LeoSat to fold, sent OneWeb into Chapter 11 and kept Telesat in announcement mode for over three years now. Let’s dig...

The satellite industry is sometimes difficult to understand. OneWeb recently filed for bankruptcy, letting go of most of its staff, but not long after filed for an expansion of their fleet to 48,000 satellites. In 2015, OneWeb announced that its constellation would comprise 1,600 satellites, but later brought that total number of spacecraft down to...