Amazon's Kuiper broadband satellite constellation is a capital-intensive effort, but eventually it "will be a meaningful operating income and [return on invested capital] business," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a letter to shareholders Thursday. Amazon intends to have upward of 3,200 satellites in orbit "over the next few years" to provide connectivity to the 400 million-500 million mostly rural households globally lacking access, he added.
One of Astranis' four recently launched MicroGEO satellites headed to geostationary orbit seems to have suffered a failure, leaving it stuck in transfer orbit as orbital debris, space situational awareness expert Jim Shell posted on X late Tuesday. The four MicroGEOs were launched in December and were intended to enter into service this summer. Shell said one of the four seemingly hasn't maneuvered since early February. Astranis didn't comment Wednesday.
SpaceX's revenues -- an estimated $13.1 billion in 2024 -- should hit $18.2 billion this year, Payload said Wednesday. Driving that is the customer base for SpaceX's Starlink growing from 4.6 million to 8.4 million, it said, adding that the consumer market is particularly powering Starlink's growth. It said average monthly revenues per user are declining, due to a higher international mix: While a Starlink subscription is roughly $110 a month in the U.S., it's only about $40 a month in France and Brazil.
Intelsat 901 saw five additional years of use via Northrop Grumman's life-extension mission, which just concluded, Intelsat said Wednesday. It said Northrop Grumman's vehicle -- which docked with the satellite in February 2020 -- detached from 901 after moving the satellite to a graveyard orbit, marking the milestone of being the first completed satellite life-extension mission.
Satellite-delivered IoT connectivity "is undergoing a significant transformation," with more operators moving toward standardization, Counterpoint wrote Tuesday. Examples include Myriota's partnering with Viasat for its 5G non-terrestrial network (NTN) IoT offering, Hyperpulse, and Iridium's move to 3rd Generation Partnership Project NTN standards, it said. Satellite operators, which once worked in closed ecosystems, are now collaborating with mobile network operators, mobile virtual network operators and chipset vendors for seamless integration with terrestrial networks, it said. Satellite IoT connectivity remains notably more expensive than cellular IoT, but advancements in narrowband NTN technology are expected to help reduce satellite IoT connectivity costs significantly, which will drive wider adoption, Counterpoint said.
The FCC Space Bureau has created a docket, 25-157, on modernization of spectrum sharing for satellite broadband, it said in a public notice in Tuesday's Daily Digest.
Astrobotic is looking at a Dec. 4, 2025-March 4, 2026, window for launching its Griffin Mission 1 to the south polar region of the moon, it said in an FCC Space Bureau application posted Tuesday. It said GM-1 would deliver NASA and commercial payloads for a lunar surface mission. The total mission would be at most 28 days, including five days on the lunar surface. GM-1 would be decommissioned on the moon's surface and not return, Astrobotic said. The spacecraft would operate in the X band and use the S band for short-range communications between the lander and the rover on the lunar surface, it said.
The FCC Space and Wireless bureaus' grant of a waiver to SpaceX for its supplemental coverage from space (SCS) service unreasonably put the burden on EchoStar to protect itself from any interference, EchoStar said this week in an application for review. The waiver, granted last month, covered the aggregate out-of-band power flux density limits that the FCC adopted in its 2024 SCS order and requires that SpaceX address any interference that happens (see 2503070030). EchoStar said the bureaus never showed that the FCC's concerns underlying its emissions limit rule had changed, gone away or become unlikely. It said the Communications Act gives the FCC the task of preventing interference, not addressing it after the fact. It asked that the full commission reverse the bureaus' waiver.
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.