While HughesNet's latency has been decreasing in recent years and is now essentially tied with Viasat, neither geostationary orbit (GSO) operator comes close to competing with SpaceX on latency, Ookla said Tuesday. It said their download speeds are increasing but also remain well below Starlink's. Citing its Speedtest data, Ookla said HughesNet more than doubled its median download speeds from 20.87 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 47.79 Mbps in Q1 2025, while Viasat went from 25.18 Mbps to 49.12 Mbps. However, U.S. Speedtest users on SpaceX's Starlink network saw their median download speeds nearly double from 53.95 Mbps in Q3 2022 to 104.71 Mbps in Q1 2025, according to Ookla. It said the GSO operators also struggle to compete with Starlink in upload speeds. HughesNet's median upload speed grew from 2.87 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 4.44 Mbps in Q1 2025 -- still far lower than Starlink's median upload speed of 14.84 Mbps in Q1 2025. It said Viasat's median upload speed has been declining, from 3.06 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 1.08 Mbps in Q1 2025.

Orbital debris removal startup Kall Morris said Tuesday it had completed the first commercial demonstration of capturing unprepared objects in space. It said its robotic tentacle system was launched in November on a SpaceX mission to the International Space Station, where it was used in six separate test sessions. Those tests showed "objects in space don’t necessarily need a docking adapter or other specialized hardware to receive services from a 'tow-truck in space' and get objects to where customers want them," said Kall Morris CEO Troy Morris.

An amateur radio operator in Germany is petitioning the FCC to deny AST SpaceMobile's request to conduct telemetry, tracking and control operations in 430-440 MHz. In a petition posted Tuesday (docket 25-201), Mario Lorenz said the band is allocated in Europe to amateur radio on a co-primary basis and heavily used. Under ITU rules, the FCC would have to find that AST’s proposed use is incapable of causing harmful interference to international radio service, including amateur radio, but the record doesn't support that finding, said Lorenz.

Commercial space launch company Firefly Aerospace said Friday that it's planning an initial public offering. Its registration filed with the SEC doesn't provide an expected date. Firefly said at the end of March it had a launch backlog worth $1.1 billion.

The FCC Space and Wireless bureaus and Office of Engineering and Technology signed off Friday on license transfers needed as part of SES' $3.1 billion purchase of Intelsat. It put no special conditions on the transaction. SES/Intelsat is likely to result in lower costs from synergies, better network quality, increased investment, national security benefits "and the creation of a more vigorous satellite competitor," the bureaus said in a 35-page order.

Pointing to the various challenges facing the development of in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing (ISAM) technology, the Government Accountability Office last week laid out a set of policy options. GAO said a chief ISAM technology development hurdle is the "chicken-and-egg problem" -- ISAM providers are hesitant to develop technologies before there's a user base, while potential users are hesitant to create satellites that could be serviced in orbit until in-orbit servicing is commercially available. Adding to the problem is the fact that government and private satellite operators generally don't require their satellites to be designed for future servicing, such as refueling, GAO said, and there are few in-space opportunities for testing of ISAM technology.

Approval of SES' buying Intelsat should be conditioned on the new combined company complying with a variety of national security directives, NTIA petitioned the FCC on Monday (docket 24-267). The petition was on behalf of the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector, or Team Telecom. The proposed conditions include the new company making available, when requested, network-management information or a list of customers that have hosted payloads on U.S. satellites or are using U.S.-located earth stations to connect with SES satellites. The $3.1 billion deal was announced in April 2024 (see 2404300048).

T-Mobile's opposition to AST SpaceMobile's plans to use the 700 and 800 MHz bands for supplemental coverage from space (SCS) service (see 2506270038) is baseless, AST said in a filing posted Tuesday (docket 25-201). While T-Mobile argues more information is needed, the application is "ample," AST said. The company also noted that T-Mobile is demanding SCS coverage maps from AST, but T-Mobile's SCS partner, SpaceX, didn't provide such maps in its application.

SpaceX's shutdown of 500 Starlink satellites in the first half of 2025 raises questions about the company's financial picture, network capacity expert Roderick Beck blogged Monday. They were all less than 5 years old, and such shorter-than-expected lifespans for Starlinks could affect the company's income by increasing network depreciation and replacement needs, he said. Starlinks cost about $500,000 each to manufacture and $3 million to get into orbit, Beck noted. Generally, it takes four suppliers in a market to crash prices and eliminate profit levels higher than what a competitive market would see, and it remains to be seen if the low earth orbit services from Amazon's Kuiper and Chinese mega constellations will provide the necessary level of competition, he added.

Momentus is hoping for a February launch of its Vigoride-7 in-space transportation craft. In an FCC Space Bureau application posted Tuesday, the company said the vehicle -- which would spend 1.5 years in low earth orbit, deploying customers' payloads -- would operate in the S and X bands and host a customer payload operating in the 2.4 GHz band. It said future Vigoride iterations would also perform on-orbit services such as rendezvous, proximity operations and debris removal.