Military/Aerospace Electronics

Verizon, the telecommunications company, and Skylo, a non-terrestrial network (NTN) service provider, have announced a partnership to launch a commercial direct-to-device messaging service via satellite. This will enable Verizon customers – starting this autumn, for customers on certain smartphones – to have access to emergency messaging and location sharing even when a terrestrial cellular network is not available. Next year, says ...

Scotland is welcoming its biggest ever space industry event next week: the inaugural Space-Comm Expo Scotland, at SEC Glasgow over 11-12 September. The organisers are expecting 3,000 delegates and 70 exhibitors, as well as 100 speakers including representatives from  the European Space Agency, the UK Space Agency, and Ministers from the UK and Scottish Governments. “There are currently an estimated ...

Nasa has announced that a new set of science experiments and technology demonstrations will arrive at the lunar South Pole in 2027 following the agency’s latest CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) award. Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based space exploration specialist, will receive $116.9 million to deliver six NASA payloads to a particularly difficult region of the Moon. Although the night temperatures ...

SBQuantum is celebrating a pair of new contracts with government space agencies: the European Space Agency (ESA) and the the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The Canadian company – based in Sherbrook, southern Quebec – is developing quantum diamond magnetometers capable of providing readings from space. ESA For the ESA, the company has been contracted to evaluate the viability of using ...

The Andøya Spaceport in Norway has officially received its Launch Site Operator licence from the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries. Less than one year after its opening, the spaceport describes it as another important milestone towards the first launch of satellites from Norwegian soil. Norway is now bidding to become the leading space nation in the Arctic, with ...

The U.S. Space Force has awarded its Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) Site 2 contract. This is for a location in the UK as part of its role as an AUKUS partner. DARC will track objects in the geosynchronous orbit GEO with the aim of protecting critical satellites. A global network of three advanced ground-based sensors, it will be operated ...

AstroForge, the asteroid mining startup, has raised $40 million in Series A funding to “unlock a cost-effective and sustainable mining solution”. The company’s aim is to establish an untapped supply chain of raw materials for use on Earth. The funding round was led by Nova Threshold with participation from 776, Initialized, Caladan, YC, Uncorrelated Ventures and Jed McCaleb. It brings ...

Axiom Space and Nokia are partnering to integrate advanced 4G/LTE comms into the former’s next-generation spacesuits. They are what the astronauts will be wearing when they return to the Moon as part of the Nasa mission Artemis III. The companies will work together to incorporate high-speed cellular-network capabilities in the spacesuit, which is called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU). ...

The UK Space Agency (UKSA) has awarded £2.5 million to ten pilot projects as part of its Unlocking Space for Business programme. The projects will trial systems that use satellite data and services to support transport, logistics and financial services. The largest award for a single project is £400,000. According to the agency, the trials will combine terrestrial data and ...

Eutelsat is entering into exclusive negotiations with a private equity company, EQT, for the partial sale of its ground segment infrastructure assets. The parties are looking to carve out Eutelsat’s “passive assets”, i.e. land, buildings, support infrastructure, antennas and connectivity circuits. They would form a new company – a standalone legal entity – of which EQT will own 80% of ...