Earth imaging satellite operator Planet Labs plans to combine with special purpose acquisition company dMY Technology to become publicly traded with an equity value of roughly $2.8 billion, Planet said Wednesday. It said along with the dMY transaction, investors including a variety of BlackRock funds and Google are investing $200 million in dMY. The combined companies will have the $200 million and $345 million in dMY's trust account to expand into existing and new markets and build more software and machine-learning-enabled data products and services. Planet said the deal is expected to close later this year. It said Planet's current management, including the co-founders, CEO Will Marshall and Chief Strategy Officer Robbie Schingler, will continue to lead the public company.

Citing a request by space launch companies for a longer comment and reply deadline on possible dedicated spectrum allocations for commercial space launches (see 2106300038), the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology delayed the docket 13-115 deadline by 30 days. Comments now are due Aug. 11, replies Sept. 10, per Wednesday's order.

SpaceX satellites did 2,219 collision avoidance maneuvers between Dec. 1 and May 31, and in five instances other satellite operators told SpaceX they would prefer to maneuver, the company told the FCC international Bureau in a semiannual status report Friday. SpaceX said its maneuver threshold -- 1 in 100,000 chance of collision -- is a "magnitude more sensitive than the industry standard" of 1 in 10,000.

Eutelsat and Telesat said their parts in the C-band transition are largely complete, in quarterly transition reports Thursday in docket 18-122. Eutelsat said 39 of the 48 incumbent earth station antennas it serves have been transitioned, though additional antenna systems might be added. It said services migration above 4 GHz is 90% complete and all 48 antennas should be complete by August. Telesat said filters have been installed on all earth stations that didn't elect to opt out of the satellite operator handling the transition. It said it anticipates completing the transition in August

Thursday's launch of 36 OneWeb satellites, the company's eighth launch, will let it start providing broadband connectivity across the Northern Hemisphere north of the 50th parallel, it said in a series of tweets. The launch brought the size of its constellation to 254, it said. It said it received a signal from all 36.

Many federal agencies continue to follow the "legal nonsense" from the NTIA indicating they don't have to work with Ligado while there are outstanding petitions for reconsideration of the FCC's license modification approval, Ligado said in a docket 11-109 quarterly status report posted Thursday. It said it contacted agencies about assessing whether they have GPS devices that might need repair or replacement, but only one has engaged with it. "It is surprising that government agencies that just last year claimed to be concerned about their devices are unwilling to take Ligado up on its offer," it said. Ligado said it relocated its GPS augmentation services to frequencies above 1545 MHz to protect GPS. It said the move means more protection for high-precision devices, since augmentation signals will have a 9 MHz guard band protecting them from Ligado's future terrestrial operations. NTIA didn't comment.

The 3,371 satellites in orbit at the end of 2020 was up 144% from 2015, with low earth orbit satellites driving most of that growth, the Satellite Industry Association said Wednesday in its annual "State of the Satellite Industry" report, prepared by Bryce Tech. Communications was 48% of that 3,371, up from 28% in 2019, followed by remote sensing (20%), U.S. entities operate more than 1,900 satellites, some in partnership with other countries, it said. There are 562 active satellites in geostationary orbit, eight more than in 2019, with most providing communications, it said. Overall satellite industry revenue in 2020, at $271 billion, was flat year over year.

Intelsat's seven C-band replacement satellite programs "continue to progress on schedule," as do all other transition deliverables, per its C-band transition status report in docket 18-122 Wednesday. It said it has moved all customer services in the contiguous U.S. out of the lower 120 MHz on its fleet, and started Phase 2 transition activities. It said it has delivered all required encoding upgrades and all the integrated receivers/decoders needed to meet the Phase I milestone have been installed. Most compression equipment required for Phase II has been ordered, it said. Filter deployment in 46 of the top 50 partial economic areas began June 1 and about 23% of Phase 1 filter installations are done, it said. Embratel said it expects to deorbit its Star One C1 satellite, which provides C-band services in the U.S., in late August or early September. It said one customer remains on the satellite and will be transitioned to another satellite before deorbiting. It said it has tried -- unsuccessfully -- for more than a year to contact its last indirect U.S. customer, a Florida earth station receiving C-band services through an Embratel distributor, to inform it about the C-band relocation and C-band capacity available on SES' SES-4 satellite. It said that earth station's license lapsed in December. Embratel said it no longer expects to rely on the SES arrangement to transition any of its C-band customers.

OneWeb received an additional $500 million investment from co-owner Bharti Global, and reached its $2.4 billion fundraising goal, said the company Tuesday. The new investment gives Bharti a 38.6% stake, with Eutelsat, SoftBank and the U.K. government each owning 19.3%. CEO Neil Masterson said completing funding "puts OneWeb in a powerful position." It has "significantly lower entry cost" than any low earth orbit satellite company, he said: "We benefit from $3.4bn of pre-Chapter 11 investment by the original shareholders, making new OneWeb a three-times lower cost Constellation." A scheduled July 1 launch will complete 40% of its planned satellite network, said Masterson.

Claiming the FCC OK of SpaceX's license modification "is causing, and will continue to cause, injury" in the form of interference to its direct broadcast satellite service, Dish Network asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for expedited briefing and oral argument in its challenge to the order, per a motion Monday (in Pacer, docket 21-1123). Dish said the FCC and SpaceX don't object to the motion.