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The first Viasat-3 satellite has begun serving its first government customer, the U.S. Marine Corps, Viasat announced Thursday.  The Marine Wing Communications Squadron 38 (MWCS-38) and the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment are the first two military operational units using the satellite. The MWCS-38 provides expeditionary communications support to the Aviation Combat Element (ACE) inside the...

Greenhouse gas monitoring nonprofit Carbon Mapper released the first images of emission detection from the Tanager-1 satellite on Thursday, showing methane plumes from energy plants. These first methane detection images were released after the Tanager-1 satellite launched in August.  An image shared by Carbon Mapper, above, shows a plume of methane detected at an oil...

Iridium Communications has a new collaborator for its recently announced Iridium NTN Direct service. The operator is collaborating with Nordic Semiconductor for early integration of the NTN service into Nordic’s modules and chipsets.  Nordic is known for low power wireless connectivity solutions including cellular IoT (LTE-M, NB-IoT), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, and Thread. The company has...

SES has signed a new capacity agreement with one of Europe’s biggest DTH players. It has extended its long-standing partnership with Sky through a multi-year contract renewal for satellite capacity and back-up services from SES’s prime video neighborhood of 28.2/28.5 degrees East. SES announced the new deal on Oct. 10. Under the agreement, SES will...

Viasat announced a series of improvements for its business aviation service Jet ConneX, uncapping speeds, expanding capacity and increasing network prioritization. Viasat Jet ConneX services are activated on more than 5,000 business jets.  The operator said it has hundreds of existing customers trialing the new program, called JetXP. With the trial, customers say that  bulk...

ST Engineering iDirect has announced the availability of Intuition, its next-generation, cloud-native, software-defined ground system designed for multi-orbit environments, for customer testing and adoption. Intuition aims to change how satellite networks are deployed, how connectivity services are delivered, and how satellite operators and service providers can drive revenue while streamlining operations. ST Engineering iDirect announced the...

Baiju Bhatt, one of the co-founders of investing app Robinhood, is launching a space solar power company called Aetherflux. Bhatt announced the concept of Aetherflux to commercialize space solar power as a renewable energy source, in a Medium post on Wednesday.  Bhatt co-founded the trading app Robinhood in 2013 and served as co-CEO of the...

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee is pushing back on the FCC’s decision to cancel funding for SpaceX’s Starlink constellation in a federal rural broadband program.  Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, sent a letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on Oct. 7, requesting information from the...

The Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA) has a new partnership with GSMA, an industry organization for mobile operators to explore direct-to-device (D2D) and IoT connectivity. The two organizations announced their new collaboration on Tuesday during Mobile World Congress (MWC).  The two organizations have agreed to explore integrating D2D and IoT services via mobile satellite services...

BlackSky is expanding into space domain awareness (SDA) with a new contract to support an unnamed customer to deliver non-Earth imaging (NEI). Instead of providing satellite imagery of Earth, BlackSky will collect imagery of on-orbit spacecraft for the customer.  BlackSky announced the seven-figure contract on Tuesday. As part of the contract BlackSky will integrate Gen-2...