AST SpaceMobile is making progress with offering satellite cellular service. The company launched three massive satellites in August, bringing the fleet to 13 satellites. These are much larger than ASTs original satellites or ones being used by other carriers. They are essentially floating central offices. The FCC also gave the company the go-ahead in August to begin testing its satellite-to-smartphone service. AT&T and Verizon have both inked deals with the company to be their satellite partner for cellular.
More Countries Entering the Satellite Race. STC Group has partnered with Astranis to deploy a dedicated satellite to serve Saudi Arabia. The country wants to strengthen its communications capabilities independently of the other big satellite fleets. This has become a priority for Saudi Arabia, as a complement to its major investment in terrestrial fiber networks.
The Vietnamese aerospace company VinSpace has signed a contract with SpaceX to launch its first satellite into orbit. The country hopes to develop a space industry and deploy multiple satellites in the future.
Deorbit-as-a-Service. The U.S. Space Development Agency recently chose designs to consider from three companies that have business plans to launch satellites that will capture and deorbit dead satellites left in orbit. This is a nascent industry with challenges, because nobody has ever been able to snag a dead satellite. Some people in the industry describe most existing satellites as “ungrabbable”.
More Spectrum for Satellites. The FCC is scheduled to vote at the end of September on providing more than 1,000 MHz of spectrum in the 12 GHz and 42 GHz bands for high-speed satellite broadband. The spectrum could be used for home broadband, airplane and ship connectivity, and traffic-routing between satellites and earthstations. The FCC seems to be approving new spectrum for satellite uses at a much faster pace than it ever considered for other uses of spectrum.
Next-gen Starlink Satellites. In July, SpaceX launched twenty of the next-generation V3 satellites as a test of the satellites’ solar arrays and antennae. The satellites were allowed to deorbit soon after the test. The company currently has scheduled a launch on September 28 of the first operational V3 satellites. The launch has been delayed from the original goal of the first quarter of 2026. The satellites are much larger than the V2 satellites and require the Starship rocket to launch. Starlink says the new V3 provides 1 terabit of download and 160 gigabits of upload speeds, a huge improvement over the V2 satellites. The use of the Starship rocket will also increase launch capacity. In the past, the maximum number of V2 satellites per launch was 29, but with Starship, up to 60 V3 satellites can be launched at a time.
Europe Moves Forward with IRIS2. Europe is collectively launching hundreds of independent LEO and MEO satellites to create a European sovereign satellite network. All vendors for the project are European, with Airbus, Aerospacelab, Thales Alenia Space, and OHB building the satellite constellation, and Eutelsat, SES, and Hispasat handling ground functions. IRIS2 is not intended as a competitor to Starlink for home broadband, but will be used to provide secure satellite connections for government, defense, and emergency purposes. This seems to be part of the larger movement for Europe to wean itself from American tech companies.
Connected Vehicles. Toyota and Iridium have done a demo, in conjunction with Deutsch Telekom IoT, to send voice messages to and from cars using the Iridium satellite network. This was the first test of the technology the company wants to use to provide connectivity for automotive, logistics, remote utilities, smart agriculture, emergency response and other IoT applications in areas that are out of the reach of cellular networks.
Danger of Space Collisions. Darren McKnight, a space debris expert at LeoLabs in California, said recently that we are already ripe for a major collision event in space. He says the biggest danger comes from the orbiting derelict rocket bodies that are still in orbit. These mostly sit at altitudes a little higher than LEO satellites, and a collision of rocket remains would rain debris down on all satellites below.