United Airlines will install ViaSat's in-flight entertainment and connectivity system on more than 70 aircraft, including at least 58 of its Boeing 737MAX aircraft, ViaSat said Thursday.

Expect an average of 42 commercial space launches per year globally through 2027, said the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation in its 2018 Compendium of Commercial Space Transportation released Thursday. For 2018, it's predicting 52 launches carrying 369 payloads -- 28 geostationary orbit (GSO) and 341 non-geostationary orbit (NGSO). It said the annual average of NGSO launches is expected to grow from averaging eight a year over the past 10 years to 27 annually. It expects on average 25 GSO satcom satellites to be launched annually over the next three years, up from the 20-satellite average of 2015-2017. It forecasts an average of 6.4 NGSO satcom satellite launches annually through 2027, with the OneWeb and Iridium Next constellations dominating that traffic.

Dish Network will deliver NBCUniversal's 4K high dynamic range coverage of the Winter Olympics, it said Wednesday, giving customers with the Hopper 3 DVR access to 2,400 hours of live, on-demand and streaming coverage starting with Friday’s opening ceremony. Dish also will offer a sports hub on channel 147 to help customers navigate NBCU coverage across NBCSN, USA Network, CNBC, the Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA and Dish channel 540 showing 4K HDR Olympics coverage.

AT&T is considering an initial public offering of a minority interest in its Latin America entertainment services business, DirecTV Latin America, sometime in 2018's first half, it said Wednesday. It said it confidentially filed a registration statement with U.S. regulators, but there's no guarantee it will go through with the IPO.

Two of the six data breach complaints SSL brought against Orbital ATK (see 1707240028) were dismissed. In a docket 17-cv-25 order (in Pacer) Friday, U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson of Norfolk, Virginia, said the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Defend Trade Secrets Act, Virginia Uniform Trade Secrets Act (VUTSA) and Virginia Computer Crimes Act complaints stood. But he said common law complaints of conversion and unjust enrichment were pre-empted by SSL claims under VUTSA since they were premised solely on supposed misappropriation of trade secrets.

The smallsat market hasn't "lived up to the hype" of supposedly enabling novel applications and making space vastly more accessible, Northern Sky Research analyst Carolyn Belle blogged Monday. The technology remains a work in progress due to delays in constellation deployment, lack of a dedicated smallsat launch vehicle and insufficient investment return, Belle said. That wasn't unexpected, and there are signs the smallsat market is reaching a maturity that could point to sustainable growth, she said. She cited Planet's fully operational constellation -- though taking three years longer than planned -- Spire getting closer to having a fully operational constellation, and 11 other operators' tech endeavors in the past year.

The fixed satellite service market has been relatively stable at around $11.3 billion annually over the past five years, but the top four operators' market share eroded to 60 percent, with new companies like YahSat, Thaicom and Insat joining the top 10, Euroconsult said Tuesday. It said 12 new operators started over the past five years, including in 2017 BRI, BulgariaSat and Telebras, meaning 46 revenue-generating operators as of year's end. Euroconsult said those new players, along with lower growth demand, cut margins, fill rates and revenue per transponder from five years ago. It said major issues in coming years will be the emergence of nonlinear video services, managed services and connectivity everywhere, plus non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellation and terrestrial network expansion. It said competition will increase, with 11 players expected to enter the FSS geostationary market by the early 2020s. Euroconsult said operators likely will focus on high-throughput satellite payloads, systems with more coverage, power and bandwidth allocation flexibility, quicker development of NGSO constellations and a transition from bandwidth suppliers to managed service providers.

Earth station in motion sharing with fixed earth stations is feasible, as evidenced by ViaSat's coordination of ESIMs with NASA around the White Sands Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System site without interference, ViaSat officials told FCC International Bureau staffers, according to a docket 16-408 ex parte filing posted Tuesday. It said its analysis also shows ESIM use of the 29.25-29.3 GHz band is compatible with mobile satellite service feeder link operations even when close to gateways. Citing ESIM sharing possibilities, the company repeated its push for the FCC to allow secondary fixed satellite services in the 19.4-19.6 GHz and 29.1-29.25 GHz bands (see 1801180060). ViaSat also repeated its call for a clear FCC route to propose non-geostationary orbit application amendments that don't constitute a major amendment. It said it's inequitable to allow nonconforming systems to avoid previous rules but not show a route for changes to compliant systems.

Cubesats should be subject to the same 25-year deorbiting rule as other payloads when it comes to post-mission disposal (PMD), the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office said in its February Orbital Debris newsletter. It said the findings are the results of computer modeling to look at the effects to the geosynchronous orbit environment over the next 200 years of the introduction of cubesat mega constellations on the low earth orbit. Modeling of mega constellations without PMD shows significant increase in catastrophic collisions at 600-1000 kilometers, it said.

The U.N.'s Unispace+50 global conference to convene in June likely will result in an agenda that drives multilateral space policy discussions, deliberations and debates through at least 2030, Secure World Foundation Executive Director Michael Simpson blogged Monday. He said advances that could raise policy questions range from smallsat technologies and new launch approaches to artificial intelligence and the possibilities of commercial airports also handling space mission traffic.