CONSTELLATION CONSTERNATION

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

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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


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


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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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


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

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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

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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.

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ONEW

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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

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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.

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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.

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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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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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