Between Intelsat's end-user direct relationships and its OneWeb low earth orbit (LEO) partnership and SES' geostationary and medium earth orbit (MEO) assets, SES' proposed $3.1 billion purchase of Intelsat (see 2404300048) gives it more mobility competition options, Valour Consultancy Senior Analyst David Whelan emailed us Wednesday. The high level of synergy between SES and Intelsat makes the deal unsurprising, Whelan said. "It creates a new entity with multi-orbit capabilities and a vendor that becomes a one-stop-shop for Ku- or Ka-band solutions," he said. The deal gives SES direct access to aviation customers -- something it had little of outside of government, he said. SES will likely not want to disrupt the status quo in terms of Intelsat’s current customer base and will look to augment Ku-band service with its own satellites, he said. Between SES' Skala service, its O3b MEO constellation and Intelsat's Flex, New SES will be supplying connectivity to more than 12,000 maritime vessels globally, "so already a strong player," he said. The deal might not help it much in landing new customers, as LEO-only is increasingly the preferred option, he said.

May 29 is the deadline for nominating people to serve on the Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space, NOAA said in a notice in Monday's Federal Register. The agency said committee members will "evaluate economic, technological, and institutional developments relating to nongovernmental space activities and submit advice and recommendations on promising new ideas and approaches for Federal policies and programs."

SpaceX wants V-band capabilities on some of its lower-orbiting second-generation Starlink satellites. In an FCC Space Bureau application posted Wednesday, the company asked for authority to include V-band payloads on its second-generation satellites orbiting at 340-360 km. The agency last year approved V-band payloads on second-generation Starlinks operating at 525-535 km (see 2310160053). SpaceX said the FCC giving it more V-band deployment options would augment its broadband service capabilities using V-band frequencies. It said it can share V-band frequencies with other non-geostationary orbit systems and conventional geostationary orbit satellites and terrestrial networks at 300 km without becoming a significant interference threat.

The FCC Space Bureau signed off on the Amazon Kuiper request for a waiver of the requirement that it gets a positive ITU finding regarding equivalent power flux density limits before it commences operations (see 2305240064). In an order and authorization in Tuesday's Daily Digest, the bureau said a delayed deployment until after it has received an ITU finding on its filings "will only delay the provision of competitive broadband service even further." It said the condition that Kuiper provide to any interested party the data used as input to the ITU validation software and the results from running the software will provide more assurance to geostationary orbit operators that they won't see harmful interference pending an ITU finding.

EchoStar is giving fair warning about SpaceX's experimental license request to do supplemental coverage from space (SCS) operations testing in Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand. In an informal objection Monday with the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, EchoStar said the application doesn't refer to coordinating with potentially affected operators. Moreover, it doesn't propose many of the conditions that are standard for similar experimental licenses or those from the FCC's February SCS order. EchoStar listed a set of suggested conditions for all SCS licensees, including specific out-of-band emission limits and mandatory coordination with potentially affected operators before commencing. In its special temporary authority request, SpaceX said it hopes to start testing on May 1 and continue until it receives commercial authority to deliver SCS from the FCC and relevant local administrations. It said beyond Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, testing markets could include Chile, Peru and Switzerland, where it also has SCS partnerships.

Iridium doesn't foresee having to launch additional satellites until the latter half of the 2030s. In a call with analysts Thursday where the company announced its Q1 financial results, CEO Matt Desch said Iridium doesn't anticipate making any spending on a next-generation satellite constellation this decade and will ramp up that spending slowly after 2030. The company said Q1 revenues were $203.9 million, down slightly from $205.3 million in Q1 2023.

Impulse Space hopes it can launch its non-geostationary orbit Impulse-2 orbital transfer vehicle as soon as October, it said in an FCC Space Bureau application posted Thursday. It's seeking approval to operate Impulse-2 as a host of experimental payloads and to demonstrate on-orbit maneuvering capabilities. Impulse said Impulse-2 would be "a steppingstone toward creating an orbit transfer vehicle that will ... be capable of rendezvousing and lowering the orbit of or de-orbiting harmful orbital debris."

The 2,860 small satellites launched in 2023 represented 97% of all satellites launched last year, BryceTech said Thursday. Smallsats accounted for the same percentage of satellites launched in 2022, it said. Communications accounted for 79% of the smallsats, with another 13% being remote sensing, it said. There were 267 different operators of the 2,860, up from 212 different operators for the smallsats launched in 2022, it said. Of the 221 orbital launches worldwide last year, 164 were for smallsats, it said. Bryce Tech found smallsats -- traditionally 1,200 kilograms or fewer -- are growing, with second-generation Starlinks being larger than first-generation designs. Meanwhile, Planet, Capella and Iridium next-gen satellites are all bigger than what they're replacing.

Facing supply chain woes such as component shortages, satellite manufacturers and launch companies are building direct relationships with suppliers and using acquisitions to mitigate those disruptions, Analysys Mason analyst David Oni wrote Thursday. Oni said satellite-makers and launch companies need to diversify their supplier bases so they don't rely on a single source and aren't as vulnerable to geopolitical risks and chip shortages. He said launchers should collaborate with satellite manufacturers to develop modular satellite architectures with standardized interfaces, making in-orbit repairs and upgrades using readily available components easier.

A third party's petition that reinstates Spectrum Five's attempt to get a pair of Intelsat satellites' FCC licenses revoked is a private contractual dispute between petitioner BIU and SF, the full commission said in an opinion and order released Thursday. As such, it's better that a court, not the FCC, handle the situation, the opinion and order said. The docket 20-399 order dismissed BIU's application for review seeking to undo an Enforcement Bureau rejection of a BIU petition to have the SF complaint alleging license term violations by Intelsat reinstated (see 2311150031).