Shaun Waterman

LOS ANGELES — Frank Turner, technical director of the Space Development Agency, is a man with a lot of problems, and he doesn’t mind talking about them. “I’m not standing […]

LOS ANGELES — MITRE, the federal contractor that runs R&D labs for the U.S. government, is developing a space cyber lab where real satellite hardware and software can be tested to ensure […]

LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Space Force is offering free, non-attributable cybersecurity supply chain and vulnerability scanning services to both its commercial vendors and to other government agencies, Col. Jennifer […]

The ground segment is experiencing tectonic shifts in the marketplace with emerging technology and new business models. These conversations were front and center at SATELLITE 2022. In this article, Shaun […]

After emerging from pandemic-induced supply chain crises, satellite manufacturers are turning to software-defined satellites to open the possibility of new business models and glean more data about performance, the CEOs […]

It’s all about the form factor. Flat panel antenna (FPA) is not a term widely loved in a competitive industry where everyone wants to brand their own technology — electronically […]

The war in Ukraine, and the hack of Viasat’s KA-SAT network, has highlighted the long-standing geopolitical reality for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) operators who serve government and […]

The high bandwidth inter-satellite data links made possible by laser-based optical communications technology will revolutionize the satellite ecosystem, and enable a new generation of autonomous vehicles in orbit, a SATELLITE […]

Major satellite operators continue to wrestle with their transformation from a mature industry focused on broadcast delivery of regionalized TV services, into a fast-growing, constantly transforming slice of the global […]

Multi-mode data connectivity took a step closer to reality Monday, when Hughes Network Systems unveiled two new ground terminals at SATELLITE 2022. One integrates cellular 4G LTE signals with those from […]

The extraordinary diversity of the smallsat sector makes it unlikely that standards can solve challenges for its ground systems, but many of the same objectives can be achieved through virtualization, […]

The story of satellite communications is a tale of the search for more bandwidth. Physics defines the terrain of the search — communicating across the vast distances of space can […]

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is deciding how to incorporate space assets like new multi-orbit constellations of broadband communications satellites into its efforts to protect the country’s vital national […]

New Space is greedy for ground. Traditional Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites are stationary relative to the Earth — they hang at a fixed point in the sky and a […]

RESTON, VA — The U.S. satellite sector must embrace modern software design practices like agile and DevSecOps if America’s space efforts are to remain ahead of foreign competitors like China, […]

Ground systems technology is years behind the satellites it supports and catching up will entail a fundamental transformation of the sector and the introduction of interoperable standards, panelists at SATELLITE […]

Faced with a steady decline in the price of their basic commodity, satellite operators have turned to vertical integration to drive efficiency savings and create new business models which capture […]

The satellite industry has been hit hard by a succession of global supply chain crises during the pandemic — including the worldwide microchip shortage. But a panel of executives from […]

There are many factors driving the ballooning complexity of ground systems, but paradoxically one of them is the customer desire for simplicity. “We’re at a position in the market where […]

Smallsats, new orbits, and mega-constellations have revolutionized the satellite industry space segment in recent years. The pace of technological change has led some to question whether the ground segment can […]

Big insurance and financial services firms have used satellite Earth Observation imagery for a decade or more, but over the past few years the market has ballooned — driven as […]

Some of the most important and disruptive changes that the wave of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations will bring to the satellite business will be on the ground, rather than in […]

In a world where enterprises can rent not just additional computing power, but their entire IT network, Tokyo-based startup Infostellar is using that model by offering ground-station-as-a-service for the emerging […]

Finnish startup Iceye has big ambitions — the smallsat company wants to do for satellite imagery what IBM did for computing in the ‘80s. “We want to democratize the technology, […]

Agility was one aspect of New Space that On Orbit guests could agree on, as they put the hotly debated term under the microscope during a live podcast recording at […]

Space is getting more crowded, but the growing risk of a satellite colliding with orbital debris is what economists call “a tragedy of the commons” — it’s no one’s job […]

Satellite manufacturing giants touted their commitment to agile development and spending on new capabilities like on-orbit refueling at Tuesday’s closing session of SATELLITE 2020, painting a rosy picture of a […]

The agency in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) that buys commercial satellite services for the U.S. military is working on a new acquisition strategy, aiming to centralize and consolidate […]

Facing competition from a wave of NewSpace market entrants, satellite operators have to respond by moving to a mixed-orbit model and focusing on broader service delivery, executives said during the […]

The satellite business is at a double fulcrum, U.K. market analysts say — both incumbents and would-be disruptors face their own moments of truth in the next few years, and […]