Airbus will add satellite-delivered connectivity from Amazon's Kuiper system to its in-flight connectivity offering, the aircraft maker said Tuesday.

Viasat said Monday it had signed an agreement with Telesat that will see Ka-band capacity from Telesat's Lightspeed low earth orbit constellation integrated into Viasat's multi-orbit network. Telesat said its capacity will be used in such markets as aviation, maritime and defense. The thousands of aircraft with Viasat GM-40 antennas will be able to access the Lightspeed network when global services start in late 2027, it said.

Impulse Space is aiming to launch the Impulse-3 orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) later this year, it told the FCC Space Bureau in an application posted Monday. It said Impulse-3 -- its third OTV mission -- will deploy up to four third-party satellites and host six non-deployable payloads. The mission is also intended to demonstrate on-orbit maneuvering capabilities. Impulse-3 will operate in the S and X bands, the company added.

Saying Amazon gave no advance word of its plans to launch its first batch of Kuiper satellites Wednesday (see 2504020044), EchoStar's Hughes is asking for more time to submit the technical demonstration that the FCC requires, showing how Hughes will protect those non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellites from interference from its Jupiter 3 satellite. In an FCC Space Bureau waiver request posted Monday, Hughes asked for 40 additional days. Hughes said a condition of Jupiter 3's license is that 60 days before the initial scheduled launch of a new U.S. NGSO fixed satellite service system, Hughes either has to complete coordination with that NGSO operator or submit the technical demonstration. Hughes and Amazon are in coordination discussions, the filing said, but the additional time will let Hughes either complete that coordination or file its technical demonstration.

Competition to provide satcom services to the U.S. government is heated and intensifying, SES and Intelsat said in a redacted version of a memo submitted in January to DOJ's antitrust division. The white paper, posted Monday in docket 24-267, argued for the necessity of SES' planned purchase of Intelsat, announced 12 months ago (see 2404300048). The two companies said that with the government vertical already being intensively competitive, SES/Intelsat "poses no threat to competition." Rather, with SpaceX's proposed Starshield program of satellites built for government users and other low earth orbit constellations having competitive advantage, concerns about SES/Intelsat lessening competition in satcom "overstate the potential impact of the Proposed Transaction on the Government vertical," they said. The combination will give the U.S. government "an even more reliable partner and supplier that offers a resilient, secure, highly capable and seamless satellite network operating in multiple orbits and frequency bands."

The orbital debris mass in low earth orbit is increasingly dominated by Chinese rocket upper stages, space security consultant Jim Shell wrote Friday. After launches that started in 2024 for the Thousand Sails and Hulianwang W. Digui mega constellations, rocket upper stages for both are being left in high-altitude orbits with orbital lifetimes of more than 100 years, he said. That's contrary to accepted norms, he said. It's expected there will be more than 1,000 Chinese launches over the next several years deploying the constellations, he said.

California launch technology startup SpinLaunch unveiled plans Thursday for a low earth orbit microsatellite broadband constellation. It also announced a $12 million investment from Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace for the constellation's development and commercialization. SpinLaunch said an in-orbit demonstration is planned for 2026.

The initial group of Amazon's Kuiper satellites is set for launch April 9 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, Amazon said Wednesday. The 27 Kuipers will be deployed at an altitude of 450 kilometers, it added. Amazon expects to offer commercial satellite broadband service later this year, the company said, calling the 27 satellites "a significant upgrade" from the prototypes launched in 2023 (see 2310110007). Amazon said the satellites are coated in a mirror film that scatters reflected sunlight to make them less visible to ground-based astronomers. In the next several years, there are seven more Kuiper launches planned on Atlas V, along with 38 launches on ULA's larger Vulcan Centaur rocket and 30-plus launches by Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX.

Not taking full advantage of the various global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals available harms the U.S. "at no cost to America's foreign adversaries," authors said in an Apple-funded white paper filed at the FCC Tuesday (docket 25-110). John Raquet, senior vice president at Integrated Solutions for Systems, and Terry Burruss, a former senior intelligence officer in the CIA's Directorate of Digital Innovation, said that for internet-assisted navigation and timing systems, having access to multiple GNSS signals carries little risk. Allowing access to multiple GNSS constellations also lets U.S. companies compete better, they said. Investing in GPS "is paramount," but adopting open access to GNSS signals "will allow the U.S. to continue to lead in GNSS-related technology, as it has since the inception of GPS."

Geostationary orbit satellite operators writing down the value of their GSOs, along with underwhelming GSO orders, are starting to undermine claims for multi-orbit satellite systems, Quilty Space's Caleb Henry wrote Monday. In a call last week with analysts as Telesat announced its latest quarterly earnings, CEO Dan Goldberg acknowledged that the company hasn't ordered a GSO in nine years, even as some of its satellites are nearing the end of their lifespans, "because we haven't been able to close a compelling business case for a new [GSO] in quite some time." Telesat -- with a $187 million write-down -- is the second major GSO operator to disclose a significant impairment charge because of difficulty selling GSO capacity, with Eutelsat reporting a write-down in February, Quilty's Henry said. Both companies, meanwhile, are investing heavily in low earth orbit, with Telesat planning its Lightspeed constellation and Eutelsat buying OneWeb and participating in the EU's Iris2 constellation, he said.