empowering high- throughput evolution2017/09/25 · in northrop’s orbital acquisition air force...

SEPTEMBER 25, 2017BUSINESS | POLITICS | PERSPECTIVE

I N S I D E

■ Cassini's final moments■ Quantum encryption■ Downlink in the ride-hailing era

VISIT SPACENEWS.COM FOR THE LATEST IN SPACE NEWS

Empowering high-throughput evolution

A year after absorbing O3B, SES is going big

on medium Earth orbit

end end Small Spacecraft MISSIONS-to-

Sun Sensors CubeSatS ADACSStar Trackers

adcolemai.com

50 kg - 180 kg Satelitte Platform

SmallSatellites& CubeSats

E n d - t o - E n d

Reliable

ADACS

Sun SensorsStar TrackersReaction WheelsEarth Horizon Sensors

MAGICBus

on Sensors

Attitude Determinationand Control Systems

SPACENEWS.COM | 1

ABOVE: A NASA artist’s concept of Cassini diving between Saturn and its innermost ring. See story, page 12.

ON THE COVER: AN SES DEPICTION OF ITS NEWLY ANNOUNCED O3B MPOWER CONSTELLATION.

C O N T E N T S 0 9 . 2 5 . 1 7

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

14Empowering a high-throughput evolutionWhy the CEO of SES thinks

no one orbit is fully right—

or completely wrong.

22Europe’s shot at quantum encryptionChina might be in the lead,

but researchers say Europe

could have a network up and

running in five years.

18HTS evolution: the customer perspectiveContent delivery networks

to operators: you need to

evolve, starting yesterday.

24LeoSat’s big data dealLeoSat forges a pact to

transmit data for Pakistan’s

Supernet Ltd.

21Is flexibility satellite’s new must-have feature?When high-throughput is no

longer enough.

@SpaceNews_Inc youtube.com/user/SpaceNewsInc linkedin.com/company/spacenewsFb.com/SpaceNewslncFOLLOW US

3 QUICK TAKES

6 NEWS Analysts see red flags

in Northrop’s Orbital

acquisition

Air Force taking steps

to speed space

modernization

Kestrel Eye positions

Adcole Maryland

Aerospace for more

satellite work

Cassini’s final moments

26 COMMENTARY Mark R. Whittington

What the National Space

Council can do — and

what it cannot

28 COMMENTARY Ken Sembach In searching for life, go

big or stay home

30 CAPITAL CONTRIBUTIONS Dylan Taylor

Satellite downlink in the

ride-hailing era

32 FOUST FORWARD The political climate

of a NASA administrator

nomination

2 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

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SIGNIFICANT DIGITS

AIA TAPS OBAMA APPOINTEEThe Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) has selected

a former Secretary of the Army as its new leader. AIA an-

nounced Sept. 18 that Eric Fanning will become presi-

dent and CEO of the organization on Jan. 1, succeeding

David Melcher, who announced in July he would leave

the organization at the end of the year. Fanning was Sec-

retary of the Army late in the Obama administration and

previously served in other Pentagon posts, including six

months as acting Secretary of the Air Force in 2013.

AMAZING, GRACEA long-lived Earth science mission is coming to an end. NASA and its German partners are preparing

to retire the twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites in November after one

final observing run, as the satellites run out of maneuvering fuel and suffer other problems. The satel-

lites, launched in 2002 for a five-year mission, measure variations in the Earth’s gravity field that can

be used to track motions of water linked to seasonal patterns and climate processes. A replacement

mission, called GRACE-FO, is scheduled to launch early next year on a Falcon 9 along with five Irid-

ium Next satellites.

Eric Fanning

$19.9B The House passed an omnibus spend-ing bill Sept. 14 that included funding for NASA. The bill combined eight in-dividual appropriations bills, includ-ing the commerce, justice and science (CJS) bill. The omnibus bill left intact the provisions in the CJS bill giving NASA nearly $19.9 billion for 2018. The full Senate has yet to take up its version of the bill. Congress this month passed a continuing resolution that will fund the government when the 2018 fis-cal year starts Oct. 1 until Dec. 8, giv-ing Congress additional time to finalize a 2018 bill.

2The European Space Agency has signed the first contract for an Ariane 6 launch.ESA has agreed to launch four Gali-leo navigation satellites on two Ariane 62 rockets, the lighter version of the Ariane 6 with two solid-fuel strap-on boosters. The launches are scheduled for late 2020 and mid-2021, with ESA retaining an option to launch the satel-lites on an Arianespace-provided Soyuz instead.

$95MBritish fund manager Seraphim Cap-ital has established a fund devoted to investing in space-related compa-nies. The Seraphim Space Fund, with approximately$95 million availa-ble, will back companies developing Earth observation technologies and tools to analyze that data. Airbus, SES and Surrey Satellite are among the companies that have invested in the fund. Seraphim has already in-vested in Spire and Finnish company Iceye, which is developing a radar satellite constellation.


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NEW STARTSU.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis says there is

a need for new space systems to counter emerg-

ing threats. Mattis, in a Sept. 20 speech at the Air

Force Association’s Air Space Cyber conference,

called for “new starts in order to take advantage

of what industry can deliver if we are willing to

invest there.” He specifically cited concerns that

space is becoming contested and is no longer

a sanctuary. Mattis also criticized “imaginary le-

gal restrictions” that hinder cooperation between

the military and industry on discussing needs and

capabilities for future systems.

LOCKHEED’S STARTING LINEUPLockheed Martin announced a new line of satellite buses Sept. 19 that range from

cubesats to large spacecraft. The buses, despite their wide range in size, use common

components designed to reduce cost and speed production time. At the small end is

the LM 50, a nanosatellite bus developed in partnership with Terran Orbital, a cubesat

developer that Lockheed Martin took a stake in earlier this year. At the large end is the

LM 2100, an updated version of its A2100 bus used primarily for large GEO satellites.

BLACKSKY’S SILVER LININGBlackSky announced Sept. 15 a joint venture with Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio

for its Earth-imaging constellation. Thales Alenia will make a minority investment in

BlackSky’s owner, Spaceflight Industries, and create a joint venture to establish a sat-

ellite manufacturing facility in the U.S. for BlackSky’s satellites. BlackSky is planning

a 60-satellite constellation to ultimately provide hourly revisits of most of the Earth.

Telespazio will help distribute the analytics products derived from BlackSky satellite

imagery worldwide, with a focus on Europe. The first four satellites of the BlackSky

constellation will launch next year, but with no set timetable for the rest of the system.

“Just recently, we had to go and change the scheme on how we number objects in orbit because we’re frankly running out of numbers.”—TED MUELHAUPT, ASSOCIATE PRINCIPAL

DIRECTOR OF THE SYSTEMS ANALYSIS

AND SIMULATION SUBDIVISION AT THE

AEROSPACE CORPORATION, IN A SEPT. 21

PRESENTATION ON CAPITOL HILL ON ORBIT-

AL DEBRIS.

SPACENEWS.COM | 5

QUICK TAKES

DIALING UP BROADBAND DOLLARS?SpaceX is seeking an exemption to an FCC ruling that disqualifies

satellite systems from accessing a broadband fund. The FCC ex-

cludes satellite systems from its Connect America Fund, estab-

lished to help provide broadband access to 23 million Americans

without it, because it concludes that satellites are not able to pro-

vide low-latency services. SpaceX disagrees, arguing that its pro-

posed constellations in low Earth orbit will have latencies of as low

as 25 to 35 milliseconds and can provide “fiber-like speeds.” In a

Sept. 18 letter to the FCC, SpaceX wrote: “Conflating [Non-geosyn-

chronous] systems and [geosynchronous] systems would be the

same as the Commission prohibiting fiber systems from bidding

because dial-up is not fast enough: just because both systems are

hard wired does not mean that they are equivalent.” SpaceX, mean-

while, disclosed in a trademark filing that it plans to call its broad-

band system “Starlink” while leaving the door open for using that

name for other satellite applications, such as remote sensing.

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Director-ge-space-news.indd 1 12/08/2017 08:28

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You will bring sound experience in key management support processes and services to the development and operations of complex systems, preferably gained in the aerospace sector. Your drive to enhance processes and facilitate changes must be evident, as well as your experience in applying international standards, in particular the ISO 9000 series. You will manage large teams in a complex multi-disciplinary environment and be adept at interfacing with internal customers. You will develop people to ensure the long term continuity of business-critical skills. You should be a skilled negotiator and relationship builder. Fluency in English is mandatory.

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News of the $9.2 billion acquisition by

Northrop Grumman of Orbital ATK

has been met with mixed reactions

on what it could mean for the Pen-

tagon’s space business.

In a conference call Sept. 8, executives from

both firms described the combination of both

companies as a “complementary fit.”

Industry analysts see the merger as a natural

consequence of constrained government spend-

ing and pressure on corporations to reduce costs.

But they also are raising potential red flags such

as the possibility that a larger, more vertically in-

tegrated company would leave the military with

fewer choices in certain sectors of the market.

One concern is what implications this merger

could have in ongoing efforts to modernize the

nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. Orbital

ATK is one of two key suppliers of rocket motors

that would power future ICBMs. The two prime

contractors that were selected to design the

next-generation “ground based strategic deterrent”

ICBM — Boeing and Northrop Grumman — had

been expected to compete the rocket motor work

between Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne.

With Orbital under Northrop Grumman

ownership, that type of competition would not

be possible. “It will be interesting to see how the

NEWS CONSOLIDATION

Analysts see red flags in Northrop’s acquisition of Orbital ATK

An unarmed Minuteman 2 launches from Vandenberg in April Northrop is vying with Boeing to replace the 50-year-old ground-based missile.

Air Force responds with regards to the GBSD

program,” space and defense analyst Todd Harri-

son, of the Center for Strategic and International

Studies, told SpaceNews. “If there is any area for

pushback, that may be it.”

Outside of GBSD concerns, “I think this merger

makes a lot of sense for both companies,” Har-

rison added. “In the space segment, Northrop

has been a leader in satellite payloads but not so

much when it comes to developing complete

systems. This acquisition vertically integrates

their business by bringing in Orbital’s expertise

in satellite buses, launch systems and other areas.”

Both firms work in classified satellite markets,

and so an issue is how — if at all— consolida-

tion could impact this segment, Byron Callan,

of Capital Alpha Partners, noted in an email to

clients. Orbital is a subcontractor for composite

structures on the B-21 bomber to Northrop Grum-

man. “While this program is still in development,

vertical integration will also be a focus in DoD’s

review of the transaction,” commented Callan.

Orbital ATK generally benefits from the deal,

said Callan, as it faces uncertainty in commer-

cial space launch and aggressive competition

from SpaceX.

Robert Stallard of Vertical Research Partners

views the merger as favorable to both sides.

“Northrop already has a significant presence

in payloads, it has not had launcher capability

which is one of the areas that Orbital ATK brings

for both space and missile defense,” he wrote in

an email to investors.

One caveat: “Given that Northrop already op-

erates in the space field, it is possible that there

could be some overlapping activity or increased

vertical integration that could prompt regulatory

scrutiny,” said Stallard.

This would be the first prime contractor ac-

quisition under the Trump administration, and

will be seen as a test case. Concerns over the

scale of the primes were deal breakers in previous

administrations. SN


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SANDRA ERWIN

WSBR LunchRepresentative Ami Bera (D-CA)

October 2, 2017 11:30am - 1:30pmCity Club of Washington

Congressman Ami Bera will share his observations since taking over as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Space.

Congressman Ami Bera is a physician who was elected in 2012 to represent California’s Seventh Congressional District.He serves on the House Committee on Foreign A airs and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

In February 2017, Bera was elected Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Space by House Democrats.

Register for the Luncheon at:www.wsbr.org


NEWS MILITARY SPACE

Air Force taking steps to speed up space modernization

Space advocates on Capitol Hill have

pounded the Air Force for the slow

pace of modernization. The four-star

general in charge of Air Force Space

Command says the message has been heard

loud and clear.

“We need to move faster,” Gen. John “Jay”

Raymond said Sept. 20 at the Air Force Asso-

ciation’s Air Space Cyber conference in Na-

tional Harbor, Maryland.

“And we are taking steps to be able to do

that,” he added.

The Air Force is convinced that acquisition

SANDRA ERWIN

programs would move faster if the chain of

command were simplified, he said. Service

leaders have asked the Pentagon to dele-

gate milestone decision authority to the Air

Force for critical programs, for instance. “We

are pushing down to the lowest levels we

can the authority on acquisition programs,”

said Raymond.

Space Command has its own fast-track pro-

curement office known as “operationally re-

sponsive space.” But it is also reaching out to

the Air Force rapid capabilities office, an or-

ganization that has been lauded for minimiz-

ing red tape and bringing to fruition the B-21

bomber and the X-37B space plane.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, shown visiting the Alabam National Guard in May, wants to re-align space force into a seper-ate branch of the military.

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“Keeping up with the accelerated pace of change of threats is a problem in general for DoD.”

Military space warriors also are seeking

to work more closely with the intelligence

community’s National Reconnaissance Of-

fice that builds secret spy satellites. “We need

to have more partnerships with the NRO,”

said Raymond.

A test of whether the Air Force can move

faster is coming up this fall when Space Com-

mand will begin experimenting with a new

tactical network called Enterprise Space Battle

Management Command and Control.

Unlike traditional systems, this one is being

designed with open standards so it can be up-

dated as new technology comes on the mar-

ket. “The goal is to develop a system with an

open architecture to enable broad commer-

cial involvement,” Raymond said.

“The doors are open to commercial space,”

he said.

Brian Weeden, space policy expert at the

Secure World Foundation, said these are

worthwhile efforts but doubts that they will

accomplish dramatic change.

Closer ties with the NRO would be help-

ful, but that seems unrealistic, Weeden told

SpaceNews. “There are challenges in how the

military space world interacts with the intel-

ligence world.” The NRO has a different cul-

ture, different legal authorities and budgets

than the military.

Weeden estimates that about $25 billion a

year is spent on national security space and less

than $10 billion is in the unclassified budget.

The sluggish acquisition process is an is-

sue not unique to space, he said. “Keeping up

with the accelerated pace of change of threats

is a problem in general for DoD.”

Former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee

James led a number of procurement reforms

during the Obama administration, such as di-

recting more frequent use of nontraditional

contracting. Nonetheless, “We still have a long

way to go,” James said Sept. 6 at the Center for

Strategic and International Studies.

“I think we need to continue pushing the en-

velope,” she said. “The key thing is to get some

of the bureaucracy off to the side and stream-

line. We don’t need a massive reorganization.”

The important thing is for leaders to make

decisions and “move out,” she said. “That was

one of my key frustrations. Congress does

see we have struggled. And they are OK to be

concerned.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the

subcommittee on strategic forces, has been

pushing to realign space forces into a sep-

arate branch of the military. “We need to in-

tegrate our space program much better,” he

said. “We should be simplifying acquisition.”

Former Air Force procurement chief Wil-

liam LaPlante said the service would be smart

to follow the rapid capabilities office model for

the space business. “It has the best contract-

ing officers and engineering talent, the best

acquisition professionals,” he said. “They get

stuff done.”

However, there is a risk of overloading the

rapid capabilities office with too many programs

and slowing it down. He would recommend a

“space rapid capabilities office” to focus only

on space. “It’s a model that works.”

Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, head of Air Force Space Command, it taking steps to streamline acquisition.

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NEWS SMALL SATELLITES

Kestrel Eye launch positions Adcole Maryland Aerospace for more satellite work

A small satellite built for the U.S. Army awaits its deployment orders

With the recent launch of its Kes-

trel Eye electro-optical micro-

satellite as an Army testbed,

Adcole Maryland Aerospace

is in the hunt for other related government

and commercial business, company Presi-

dent Glen Cameron said.

Already, both commercial and government

potential customers have sought contracts or

shown interest in the microsatellite system or

its components, Cameron said.

“Most of the immediate, short-term inter-

est has come primarily from commercial cus-

tomers,” he said. “They like to lean forward a

little. The interest from the government is very

much ‘wait and see’ how the system performs.”

Adcole already has seen a great deal of in-

terest from companies looking to build on

MICHAEL FABEY

what’s been accomplished with Kestrel Eye,

said Ken Bocam, program manager.

“While some are taking a ‘wait-and-see’ ap-

proach,” he said, “for others, the mere fact that

the hardware has been built and delivered and

so forth — that it’s been through qualification

testing, which is not a cakewalk — they’ve al-

ready engaged us to build on this technology.”

The Army test mission could prove to be a

boon for the Crofton, Maryland-based com-

pany, the result of a May merger between Ad-

cole and Maryland Aerospace. “This essentially

puts us on the map and proves our capabili-

ties to deliver spacecraft and spacecraft com-

ponents and especially how to work at the

full-mission level,” Bocam said.

“We’ve had the opportunity to get it built

and launched and hopefully demonstrated in

space,” he said. “There is opportunity for us to

capitalize on this.”

The company has developed a small space-

craft platform it calls the Magic Bus, a Kestrel

Eye derivative, he said, for commercial markets.

“We can accommodate a lot of different

payloads that are of interest to commercial

and government customers,” he said. “The

dimensions are such, with easy scaling, the

Magic Bus can be used for lot of secondary

launches, including shared launches with other

satellites. The dimensions really maximize the

Adcole Maryland Aerospace aims to parlay its experience building Kestrel Eye into a commercial offering it calls Magic Bus.

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rideshare opportunities out there to accom-

modate sensors and payloads.”

While it tracks commercial and other gov-

ernment business opportunities, the company

is also anxiously awaiting the deployment

of its Kestrel Eye Army microsatellite, which

launched Aug. 14 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket

from Cape Canaveral as part of a cargo resup-

ply mission to the International Space Station.

The satellite will be deployed by the space-sta-

tion crew after a Japanese Experiment Mod-

ule airlock opening is scheduled. The station’s

arm will place Kestrel Eye into position and re-

lease it for deployment in the fall, possibly in

October, Bocam said.

Then the satellite will be powered up and

checked out, he said, a procedure that could

run a couple of weeks. Once the Army and the

rest of the Kestrel Eye team feel assured the

satellite is functioning properly, it will start its

military assessment and demonstration, which

could be completed by the end of the year.

“At the conclusion of the military utility

assessment,” Bocam said, “if there is orbital

lifetime remaining — and at the prerogative of

the Defense Department, the Army primarily

— there may be an opportunity to utilize the

spacecraft for any residual operations.”

The Army wants to demonstrate how a

nanosatellite can capture space-based, tacti-

cal-level intelligence and help a ground com-

mander avoid tactical surprise, said Lt. Gen.

James Dickinson, commander of the U.S.

Army Space and Missile Defense Command.

The Army wants to show the military ben-

efits of downlinking satellite imagery via a da-

ta-relay network without the need for relays

routed through the continental United States.

“Based on the military assessment they

may come back to us and ask us to enhance

the vehicle, if they want to move to an oper-

ational system,” Cameron said.

“Or if this goes to the next stage,” he said,

“the Army could decide to fund a full constel-

lation, moving us to the production of doz-

ens of spacecraft – they are talking as many

as 60. That would be a significant challenge.”

One, he said, he’d like to face.

Kestrel Eye hitches a ride on a Falcon 9 bound for the Inter-national Space Station.

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NEWS OUTER PLANETS

Cassini’s final

moments

IN THE FINAL MINUTES OF CASSINI’S 20-YEAR MISSION in the early morning

hours of Sept. 15, team members focused

their attention on a pair of green lines that

looked like EKGs. The displays showed the

signal being received by NASA’s Deep Space

Network (DSN) at X- and S-bands, each with

a spike in the middle: the signal from, and the

heartbeat of, Cassini.

At 7:55:39 a.m. Eastern, the spike on the

X-band display disappeared, indicating that

the DSN was no longer receiving a signal from

Cassini at that frequency. Seven seconds later,

the same thing happened for the S-band display.

Cassini had gone silent, for good.

“The signal from the spacecraft is gone

and, within the next 45 seconds, so will be

the spacecraft,” Cassini program manager Earl

Maize said in mission control moments later.

“I’m going to call this the end of mission.”

Cassini’s final transmission came as the

spacecraft made a deliberate plunge into Sat-

urn’s atmosphere, a maneuver planned years

in advance to safely dispose of the spacecraft

as it exhausted its supply of maneuvering fuel.

The concern was that the spacecraft, if left to

drift in orbit around the planet, could one day

collide with the moons Enceladus or Titan, two

worlds that scientists — using data from Cas-

sini itself — believe to be potentially habitable.

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“We didn’t have any choice,” Maize said

in an interview shortly before the end of the

mission, when asked why the mission ended

with a plunge into the atmosphere. “Cassini

must be disposed of properly.”

Cassini returned its last images of the Sat-

urn system in the hours prior to its plunge,

then reconfigured itself to transmit real-time

data from eight instruments as it entered the

atmosphere, providing scientific results, such

as measurements of the composition of the

atmosphere, up until its last seconds.

Maize said there was the option to send

Cassini out of orbit around Saturn entirely,

but the scientific return promised by a final

plunge into the planet was too good to refuse.

“Saturn was so compelling, so exciting, and the

mission we finally came up with was so rich

scientifically that we just couldn’t — we had

to finish up at Saturn, not some place else.”

That final plunge ended a mission that

started with a launch on a Titan 4 in October

1997. Cassini entered orbit around Saturn in

July 2004 and studied the planet, its rings and

dozens of moons for more than 13 years. It also

deployed a European-built probe, Huygens,

that landed on Titan in early 2005.

The spacecraft was remarkably free of major

issues throughout the entire mission, perform-

ing as expected up through its final seconds

in the atmosphere. Spacecraft designers “built

a perfect spacecraft, right to the last end,” said

Julie Webster, spacecraft operations manager

on the mission, at the press conference. “It did

exactly what it said it was supposed to do,” she

said. “Even better.”

This deliberate end to Cassini gave those

involved time a chance to meet one more time

to commemorate the mission. Down the road

from JPL, hundreds of scientists gathered on

the Caltech campus in the pre-dawn hours,

watching the NASA TV broadcast of the Cas-

sini’s final moments.

“Cassini’s final gift to humanity is that we

knew the day, the hour, the minute and now

the second of the plunge,” said Linda Spilker,

Cassini project scientist. “We could gather to-

gether with the scientists, the engineers, the

public and our own families — a giant, worldwide

Cassini family — and share this final moment

of the plunge and have that memory to add to

our Cassini scrapbooks.”

NASA currently has no missions on the

books to return to Saturn, but those involved

with Cassini emphasized that they expect,

sooner or later, NASA to return to Saturn and

its moons, perhaps with a mission selected

in the ongoing competition for the next New

Frontiers mission.

“The discoveries that Cassini has made over the

past 13 years in orbit have rewritten the textbooks

of Saturn, have discovered worlds that could be

habitable and have guaranteed that we will return

to that ringed world,” said JPL Director Michael

Watkins at the press conference.

“I hope you’re all as deeply proud of this

amazing accomplishment,” Maize said to

the Cassini team in mission control after it

lost contact. “Congratulations to you all. This

has been an incredible mission, an incred-

ible spacecraft, and you’re all an incredible

team.”

One of the last images taken by the Cassini spacecraft was this view of the moon Enceladus setting behind the limb of Saturn.

14 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

SES

HTS EVOLUTION

Before SES ordered seven souped-up

O3b mPower satellites this month from

Boeing, industry spectators thought the

satellite operator would soon join competitors

Inmarsat, Intelsat and ViaSat in building out a

global constellation of high-throughput sat-

ellites (HTS) in geostationary orbit.

Karim Michel Sabbagh, SES’s president and

chief executive, dismissed such rumors Sept.

11, saying that SES had no such network in its

playbook. If, and likely when, SES covers the

globe in high-throughput capacity, it will be

from a non-geostationary orbit.

O3b mPower, expected to bring 10 terabits

of capacity to 400 million square kilometers —

about 80 percent of the Earth’s surface — can

be expanded with little difficulty to the last 20

percent, SES executives have said. SES Net-

work’s medium-Earth orbit (MEO) foothold

— at 8,000 kilometers, less than a fourth the

distance to geostationary orbit — now forms

the crux of SES’s high-throughput strategy.

But that doesn’t mean SES is divesting from

GEO-HTS. While O3b mPower does eliminate

the need for replacing two ageing geostationary

satellites, Thales Alenia Space is building SES-

17, a satellite SES ordered in September 2016,

from which Thales Inflyt Experience plans

to connect aircraft flying over the Americas.

Sabbagh said SES still has a vision for some

GEO-HTS, a larger vision for MEO-HTS, and

while skeptical, hasn’t fully ruled out low-Earth

orbit-HTS. “We will continue to look at LEOs.

They may become an augmentation capabil-

ity with what we are doing in MEO, but MEO

is the sweet spot,” he said.

Sabbagh spoke to SpaceNews Staff Writer

Caleb Henry about SES’s HTS strategy.

Before O3b mPower, the last satellite you ordered was a 200-spot-beam HTS from Thales. When you look at the future of HTS for SES, it doesn’t look like just one orbit. That’s right. Our view of the future architec-

ture is one where we make the best use of our

orbits and spectrum. For data-centric applica-

tions, there will be increasing requirements for

flexibility and dynamically optimized coverage

Empowering a high-throughput evolution

CALEB HENRY

Why SES chief Karim Michel Sabbagh thinks no one orbit is fully right — or completely wrong

SPACENEWS.COM | 15

SES

and connectivity, while being able to scale-up

the system as markets develop. We can best do

that by using our assets in GEO and MEO, with

increasing emphasis on the latter based on our

very positive experience with O3b since its start

of operation in September 2014.

Will there be a role for high-throughput sat-ellites from a GEO standpoint in the future? The answer is clearly yes. By way of example,

this would apply well for applications where

the scalability of the system is not a must-have,

and where the target coverage is firmed up

with long-term visibility. Also, high-through-

put satellites from GEO provide a unique re-

silience layer for MEO-centric solutions, and

we can increasingly envisage such an inte-

grated architecture serving specific applica-

tions in the future. We could therefore expect

O3b mPower to work in tandem with SES-12,

SES-14, SES-15, and SES-17 to provide essen-

tial augmentation and resilience.

How do you delineate between where scal-ability is a must and where it’s not? It’s a very important question. My sense is there

are some applications, such as U.S. aeronau-

tical, where the routes are already defined, so

you can’t come up with, “I’m going to change

the travel route.” This is FAA-regulated. When

you have this level of visibility and clarity into

the market that you want to serve, you say scal-

ability is not going to be the primary criterion.

U.S. government requirements

for secure and resilient commu-

nication solutions would provide

in some cases the supportive ex-

ample for increasingly focusing

on scalability and flexibility. This

would apply in cases where a solu-

tion is required across multiples

sites and/or regions with rapidly

evolving demand. And, the solu-

tion has to have some dynami-

cally managed layer to cater to

high-peak periods. With O3b cur-

rent and O3b mPower, SES Net-

works can provide such a solution and scale

it as the prevalence of the underlying appli-

cations increases and the geographic distri-

bution expands rapidly.

Last time I talked to your CTO, Martin Hal-liwell, and asked him if software-defined fully digital payloads existed, he said no. And Martin is right. Some manufacturers have

a head start versus others, particularly those

who work for defense-related industries, be-

cause in defense there was a more acute need

to move into that area. So we have seen some

of this work. What Boeing is doing is taking it

one step further because they are deploying

something that is proven and has been up and

running outside the satellite industry, validat-

ing that this can be done. We’ve come a long

way, and still have some way to go.

“We will continue to look at LEOs. They may become an aug-mentation capability with what we are do-ing in MEO, but MEO is the sweet spot.”

Artist’s rendition of SES Network’s O3b mPower constellation.

16 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

SES

HTS EVOLUTION

Your competitors’ non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) investments have all been in LEO. Why has SES chosen to double-down on MEO?What we want to do in non-geostationary orbit

is to achieve the concept of a distributed net-

work, and often I refer to that; it’s very important

for data applications. I often refer to this con-

cept as it frames our thinking for best shaping

our network architecture in order to serve da-

ta-centric applications. We looked at LEO closely,

and continue to do so. The challenge with LEO

is that we haven’t reached convincing answers

to four key questions.

What are those four questions?First, do we know what technology can be

deployed to have a system that can serve dis-

tinctively our target markets?

It is unclear to us what could be a viable tech-

nology roadmap. In our assessment, the attri-

butes of scalability and flexibility, as we have

been able to bring to bear with Boeing under

the O3b mPower development, remain elusive

in the case of LEO.

The second is do we understand how it will

operate seamlessly with the rest of the archi-

tecture that we have in place?

SES is not starting with nothing. We are

starting already with the largest and most

resilient infrastructure that is out there. So

whatever we bring has to be complemen-

tary. It has to integrate so that the whole is

bigger than the sum of the parts. We haven’t

seen that yet. I am not excluding the possi-

bility that this can be done in the future, but

the ingredients and the timing of the answer

remain open for now.

Third, how do you achieve market ac-

cess for a LEO-centric business model that is

heavily reliant on the consumer broadband

market base?

As this is the market for which most of the

advocated systems are being pursued, it is

important to address this question head-on.

What we do know is that a consumer broad-

band business is licensed quite differently from

the business markets we serve at SES. Said dif-

ferently, our market access in more than 130

SES says O3b mPower’s “seven super power satellites” will deliver unri-valed connectivity.

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countries where we do business is not appli-

cable to the consumer broadband segment. I

would also posit that there is no playbook yet

for achieving access across 130 markets if you

intend to focus on the consumer broadband

opportunity.

Last but not least, when you add all of these

things, will the numbers add up?

A LEO constellation is very capital-inten-

sive. You’ve seen some of the numbers that

have been communicated publicly by those

entities of $3 billion to $4 billion to deploy the

first generation. So you invest $3 billion to $4

billion, you put up the first generation, and

then you have five years for the payback. And

you have to payback while knowing that the

yield is less than 30 percent, because 70 per-

cent of the time the satellites are flying over

empty territory. The economics simply do not

add up. There may be a breakthrough in tech-

nology, but we haven’t seen this yet.

So, no LEO play for SES, then?We will continue to look at LEOs. They may be-

come an augmentation capability with what we

are doing in MEO, but MEO is the sweet spot.

Why? Because at 8,000 kilometers, you have the

right level of latency, you have a distributed net-

work, you have a spacecraft that at any given

point in time sees land, so you can make reve-

nue all the time, and we have the right lifespan

for the fleet from a technology cycle standpoint,

so it’s not too long, but it’s not too short.

For mPower, SES switched from Thales Ale-nia Space to Boeing. How many bids did SES entertain?We don’t talk about suppliers and vendors; we

talk about industrial partners, because with

what we are doing, we wouldn’t claim to have

the playbook, so I want to be very clear about

this. Each and every time we move from one

innovation to another, a lot of credit goes to

the partners we interact with.

Two years ago when we were serving on

the O3b board pre-full acquisition, we shared

with management our approach to SES-14 and

SES-15, whereby we communicated to a pool

of investor partners what we wanted the sys-

tem to deliver. That was both in terms of per-

formance and economics. We went through

a number of working sessions and workshops

with them to identify exactly the configura-

tion of the system. Once we felt that this was

the right definition, we then said “against this

definition, what can you offer to us?” O3b

mPower followed the same process.

This approach describes well the O3b

mPower development and selection. Both

Thales and Boeing — plus other short listed

manufacturers — presented interesting ideas,

and at the end Boeing had the most compel-

ling proposition. I do not wish to comment

on the number of bids we entertained along

the process. Suffice to say that this was a very

comprehensive and diligent process.

I would like to remind all of us at the same

time that Thales continues to be today the in-

dustrial partner with the largest book of busi-

ness with SES, since they have the eight in

the manufacturing process and SES-17. But I

think that’s healthy competition. We are de-

lighted with what we have ahead of us with

Boeing. Even for them it’s a very transforma-

tional process because you are moving from

the traditional way of building bespoke geo-

stationary satellites.

We are really talking about [progressing

from] three to four years of construction, to

an initial development work that will take be-

tween 18 and 24 months, and after that we

move into an industrial model where we have

these seven and possibly others in the future

which can be produced under a more replica-

ble model using 3D-printing and other tech-

nologies.

“We don’t talk about suppliers and vendors, we talk about industrial partners, because with what we are doing, we wouldn’t claim to have the playbook.”

18 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

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HTS EVOLUTION

Content delivery networks to satellite operators: you need to evolve, starting yesterday

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That is how three large con-

tent delivery networks, all

substantial buyers of satel-

lite capacity, are describing

internet-based television.

No other technology in recent years

has had a bigger impact on video distri-

bution — the bulk of most satellite oper-

ator’s businesses — they said, than the

ability to send content from point A to

point B with the click of a mouse.

In an hour-long discussion at this

year’s World Satellite Business Week

conference in Paris, during which each

executive was peppered with questions

about the continued relevancy of sat-

ellite distribution, no one signalled an

exit from satellite anytime soon. But one

message was clear: terrestrial alternatives

are evolving much faster than satellites.

Much of the growth of internet-dis-

tributed content is in heavily developed

markets such as the United States, West-

ern Europe, Japan and South Korea. That

said, the rapid uptake of IP distribution

is making content delivery networks, or

CDNs, wonder if satellite will keep pace.

SATELLITE IN AN INTERNET WORLD“Most of the major satellite providers have

talked a great deal about the opportunity

to do this,” Encompass’s Walters said of

integrating satellite and IP-based dis-

tribution, “but they are incredibly early

on at actually making it a reality. I think

it can be an important component of

IP-distribution, but it’s still very early

days and I don’t think anyone has fully

executed on it.”

Walters said of the contracts

CALEB HENRY

“It’s fundamentally shaken up the business models of every part of the industry.” DAVID CRAWFORD, MANAGING DIRECTOR, SATELLITE AND MEDIA, ARQIVA

“[It] is a way to collapse all the retail distribution of TV.”

PHILIPPE BERNARD, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, GLOBECAST

“The growth rate has been so extraordinary, and the complexity that it’s added to the distribution system is amazing.” CHRIS WALTERS, CEO, ENCOMPASS

20 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

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Atlanta-based Encompass has up for

renewal, most customers are planning

much shorter satellite capacity leases —

on the order of five to 10 years instead of

the customary 10 to 20 years. The band-

width amount is the same, he said, but

the “duration for virtually every one of

these contracts is coming down.”

“If you’ve got the competitors who are

getting more efficient by 20 to 25 per-

cent per annum, then satellite needs to

follow that or else … we might change

the definition of what mass market is,”

added U.K.-based Arqiva’s Crawford.

Crawford said if satellite costs can

continue to come down, and flexibility

— this year’s buzzword — continues to

go up, then satellite will hold as a main-

stream distribution infrastructure for Ar-

qiva now and in the future.

“But if the satellite industry was to

stick with high-priced fixed 10-years

risk on their broadcast service providers,

then I think the shift will begin to move

away,” he warned. “I think the economics

of alternative forms are moving pretty

quickly, and no one wants to be stuck

with a risk when there is too much un-

certainty in the market.”

THE WHY OF IP DISTRIBUTION’S SUCCESS ABI Research, in a January report, pro-

jected a seven-fold increase in live, lin-

ear over-the-top (OTT) video services

worldwide from just over $1 billion in

revenue last year to $7 billion by 2021.

Cable, satellite, and even some less flex-

ible Internet Protocol Television (IPTV)

services are losing business to OTT, the

research firm said.

Arqiva, Encompass and Globecast all

support television channels that out-

source distribution and media manage-

ment services. IP-delivery, championed

by the success of Netflix, Amazon and

others, has become a new low-cost

means of getting video to consumers.

Globecast’s Bernard said pay-TV plat-

forms, which are often early adopters

Globecast’s Philipe Bernard, Arqiva’s David Crawford and Encompass’ Chris Walters at Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week 2017 in Paris.

of bandwidth-intensive broadcast up-

grades like high definition, have likely

seen the biggest impact. New entrants

are also using IP-delivery to go straight to

customers with no middleman, he said.

IP distribution is not without its

challenges, however. Walters said the

infrastructure “requires substantial in-

cremental investments based on the rate

of growth in viewing,” which can make

it difficult to scale. To reach multiple

small locations, Encompasss uses fiber,

IP-distribution and distribution via pub-

lic internet services. For point-to-mul-

tipoint (getting identical content from

one location to many), satellite still reigns

supreme, he said.

Satellite also persists in areas where

the terrestrial infrastructure either doesn’t

exist or isn’t reliable.

“If you take the example of Africa, sat-

ellite is the key enabler to core a large

population, and any attempt to get an

OTT offer in these countries has not been

very successful,” said Bernard.

Eastern Europe and parts of Asia also

remain satellite-first markets, he said.

ULTRA-HD STILL NOT READY FOR PRIMETIMEMany satellite operators had expected

a larger uptick of Ultra-HD channels

by now, which they hoped would off-

set at least some of the losses incurred

to IPTV and OTT broadcasts.

But while Ultra-HD is fairing bet-

ter than 3D television did, it’s still not

mainstream. In March 2016, Northern

Sky Research projected more than 785

Ultra-HD channels will use satellite de-

livery by 2025, but estimated only 1 per-

cent of all channels exist in Ultra-HD.

“How many UHD channels are there

that are commercially viable? It’s very,

very few,” said Crawford.

“We would love it just as the satellite

providers would love it,” said Walters. “We

have channels where we do UHD chan-

nels and HD channels, and we would

love to do three tiers of channels for

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IT’S NO SECRET that high-throughput

satellites (HTS) employing frequency reuse

and spot beam coverage are in vogue.

Nearly every satellite operator now

has an HTS strategy, whether that’s global

coverage or the occasional payload. A

newer trend is the belief that satellites

can be truly “flexible” — that satellites

can change where, when, how much and

even potentially what kind of capacity

they beam down.

It’s likely that this trend is the result of

the higher cost of HTS satellites. Hughes

Network Systems’ Jupiter-3 satellites

will cost about three times as much

as the average satellite, according to

manufacturer Space Systems Loral. Like a

high-priced steak, its a shame to let any

of that expensive, high-quality capacity

ever go to waste.

SES and ViaSat have both stressed

the ability to put down capacity from

their respective O3b mPower and

ViaSat-3 constellations specifically

where it is needed via thousands of

narrow spot beams. Thales Alenia Space’s

vice president of telecommunications

business, Bertrand Maureau, described

Inmarsat’s fifth Global Xpress satellite,

ordered in June, as one that will “set a

new benchmark for flexibility in high-

throughput satellites.”

In a change of tone from previous

years, several satellite operators at

World Satellite Business Week this month

ranked flexibility as one of, if not their

highest, priorities for future spacecraft.

“Flexibility is No. 1,” said Fabio

Alencar, Star One’s head of business

development, during a Sept. 14 panel

discussion.

“We just launched [Star One D1] last

year … and people are still coming to me

saying ‘can you put this beam over here?’

We have demand we didn’t plan for four

years ago for this region.”

Barrie Woolston, AsiaSat’s chief

commercial operator, listed flexibility as a

principle characteristic of the company’s

first major HTS satellite, the soon-to-be-

IS FLEXIBILITY SATELLITE’S NEW MUST-HAVE FEATURE?

Eutelsat CTO Johann Leroy

ordered AsiaSat-10, describing it not as a

one-off but a requirement from this point

forward.

“The key thing is making sure we

build in sufficient flexibility into that to

enable us to be adaptable to the market,”

he said. “Long gone are the days where

you can predict the market and have

fixed beams … because the market is so

dynamic.”

Fleet operator Eutelsat is a

frontrunner with flexible satellites thanks

to Eutelsat Quantum, a new spacecraft

with European Space Agency and U.K.

Space Agency funding that will be able to

change the size, shape and throughput

of its eight beams based on customer

demand. Airbus Defence and Space

and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. are

building the satellite, which Arianespace

is scheduled to launch in 2019.

Even with Quantum, though, Eutelsat

Chief Technology Officer Yohann Leroy

said there is more progress needed.

“The dream is not full get because

the technologies that we are going to

implement around Quantum are not yet

adapted to our video business,” he said.

Video broadcasts don’t demand the

flexibility that data and government

services need, he said, but the goal

of having flexibility that television

customers want is still on the company’s

wish list.

“An ideal situation, and we are not

there yet, is to have the capability of

building a totally orbital-slot-agnostic

satellite with a payload that you can

change the beams, you can change the

frequencies, and move them around,” said

Ken Betaharon, ABS’s chief technology

officer. “We would like to have as much

flexibility as possible so that in realtime

you can change the shape of the beam

or you can direct the resources of the

satellite to different parts of the world.”

For ABS and other operators, at least

these levels of flexibility are, even if not

yet real, now much, much closer to the

realm of possibility. —Caleb Henry

all our clients. It would be a great

business opportunity for us; we’re

just not seeing incredibly strong

demand for it right now.”

Internet-delivery can cause

variable service quality, reducing

the resolution and frame-rate of

video, essentially voiding the pur-

pose of watching Ultra-HD in the

first place. For these reasons, the

satellite industry believes it has a

meaningful advantage over IPTV

and OTT here. Ultra-HD channels

also require substantially more ca-

pacity than standard or high defi-

nition channels, upwards of a full

transponder for one or two chan-

nels (or three to four with high-ef-

ficiency video coding).

22 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

SATELLITE CYBERSECURITY

AS CHINA MAKES PLANS to launch additional

satellites to test “hack-proof” quantum encryp-

tion technologies, a recent study by German

physicists says that Europe could build a low-cost

quantum encryptions network of its own by re-

cycling technology developed for the European

Data Relay System (EDRS).

Dubbed the Space Data Highway, EDRS uses

laser communication terminals developed by

German firm Tesat-Spacecom to transfer data

from Europe’s Sentinel remote-sensing satellites

to ground stations in real time via relay space-

craft in geostationary orbit.

The technology, currently aboard Eutelsat-9B

and Sentinels – 1A, 1B, 2A and 2B, which form the

European Earth-observation constellation Coperni-

cus, German physicist say, could be used for quan-

tum key distribution with only modest upgrades.

“The technology is very close to what you actu-

ally need for a quantum key distribution system,”

said Christoph Marquardt, from the Max Planck

Institute for the Science of Light, Germany, who

led a study, published in the journal Optica, that

looked at the usability of the laser system for the

purposes of quantum key distribution.

“We did some measurements from a GEO

satellite at a ground station in Tenerife and we

found that the light traveling all this distance via

the laser beams is very quantum noise limited as

it reaches the ground station.”

The finding, according to Marquardt, gives

Europe a competitive advantage to cost-effec-

tively develop a possible space-based quantum

key distribution network.

Europe’s shot at space-based quantum encryption

China currently appears to be the front-run-

ner in space-based quantum communications. In

August, Chinese scientists announced they had

managed to send an encryption key encoded in

photon quantum states from a satellite to ground

stations at the distance between 645 kilometers

and 1,200 kilometers. The experiment, involving

the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (Quess)

satellite, was the first successful demonstration of

space-based quantum key distribution technology.

Marquardt believes Europe’s advantage is in the

relatively low cost compared to the Chinese project.

“The Chinese mission, that’s a little bit like the

Apollo program,” said Marquardt. “There were

huge resources put into that. What we are trying

to do is a bit more like SpaceX. We are trying to

make this economically viable.”

Acceptable cost, according to Marquardt, could

inspire governments of ESA member states to

invest into building a network of quantum key

distribution satellites and ground stations. In

fact, Marquardt believes Europe could possibly

have such technology up and running within

five to 10 years.

To enable actual quantum key distribution,

the laser communication terminal would have

to incorporate a quantum-based random num-

ber generator that creates the random keys to be

distributed confidentially to institutions such as

embassies or banks.

“We have teamed up with Tesat and some

other industry players and we are now planning

to build a quantum key distribution satellite,” said

Marquardt. “Within five years we want to have

something that can offer quantum key distribu-

tion on a commercial basis and is economically TEREZA PULTAROVA

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ESA

viable. The plan that we have is very ambitious

and it’s only possible because we know that we

already have those space qualified technologies.”

Germany’s space agency, DLR, also partici-

pated in the study.

According to Dean Cheng, a China specialist

at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, China

might be able to establish a quantum communica-

tion network in space within the next three years.

“Chinese advances in this area over the past

several years have been notably accelerating, and

faster than many had expected,” Cheng said. “If

the Chinese are successful in introducing a quan-

tum-based communications network within the

next year, then it is probably not that great a leap

before they can extend that same communica-

tions network to space.”

According to Cheng, China said they would

introduce a commercially available ground-based

quantum-based communications network by

the end of this summer. However, it is not clear

whether they have done so.

Quantum key distribution is increasingly

seen as a necessity for secure communications

in the future. Currently, confidential communi-

cations are encrypted using mathematical algo-

rithms. However, as scientists make major leaps

towards quantum computers, such mathemat-

ical algorithms are nearing their date of expiry.

Capable of conducting multiple calculations in

parallel, quantum computers are expected to be

able to easily solve the most complicated math-

ematical operations in a fraction of the time re-

quired by conventional computers.

“In the last five to seven years, there has been

a lot of progress in some physical quantum sys-

tems,” said Marquardt.

“The quantum computer now really becomes

more likely to come in the next 10 or 15 years. There

can be a 10 to 20 percent risk that this comes in

the next 10 or 15 years and if you have this risk,

the consequences of this risk are very drastic be-

cause all the encryption would be broken then.”

Communications requiring the highest level

of security currently relies on confidential keys,

which are as long as the message itself and only

known to the two parties involved in the com-

munications exchange. However, as each key

can only be used once, problems arise when it

comes to effectively distributing such keys, ex-

plained Marquardt.

Quantum cryptography, which encodes in-

formation into the quantum states of particles,

EDRS-A is the first node of the European Data Relay System (EDRS). Nicknamed the ‘SpaceDataHighway’ by industry, EDRS complements current downlink infrastructures and allows for near-realtime services on a global scale.

comes in handy, as it is inherently immune to

eavesdropping. Every attempt to intercept the

communication by a third party affects the quan-

tum state of the particles, which alerts the recip-

ient to the interference.

“This is the first time where you can prove that

someone listened in,” said Marquardt. “The trick is

that you send many of those states and then from

measuring those states, you can first test whether

someone listened in and if nobody listened in,

then you can generate the joint key between A

to B and use that later on for safe encryption.”

Quantum key distribution systems running on

optical fibers already exist. However, Marquardt

said, these systems face major limitations as the

quantum states of the particles within the opti-

cal fibers deteriorate with distance. It is practically

impossible to send quantum information over a

distance larger then 200 kilometers.

“That’s where the idea comes in to use satel-

lites,” said Marquardt. “In the optical fibers you

always have some loss when the photons are

propagating and that after some time kills your

quantum state. When you propagate to a satellite,

you have the atmosphere but then there is vac-

uum and in vacuum there is no loss.”

With the looming prospect of functioning

quantum computers coming in the next decade,

interest in space-based quantum key distribution

is on the rise. The European Space Agency has

been looking at quantum key distribution since

the early 2000s but has fallen behind the Chi-

nese due to funding issues. The Canadian Space

Agency is currently planning a low-cost micro-

satellite mission QEYSSat to demonstrate quan-

tum key distribution.

24 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

ADCO

LE M

ARYL

AND

AER

OSP

ACE

LEO CONSTELLATIONS

constellation of routers in space which

happen to be satellites. Each of these

routers is linked — north, south, east,

west — with the four adjacent satellites

in six polar orbits,” Rigolle said at the

Space Technology and Investment Fo-

rum in San Francisco Aug. 30. “We can

link Tokyo to Singapore to New York,

depending on our customers’ needs,

allowing rooftop-to-rooftop connec-

tivity, which gives lower latency than

is possible with fiber and higher secu-

rity than is possible with any kind of

patchwork network.”

If General Motors Corp., for exam-

ple, wants to send data from Sao Paulo,

Brazil, to the firm’s Detroit headquarters,

Supernet Ltd., the Pakistani cor-

porate-data-network service

provider, announced plans

this month to establish a stra-

tegic partnership with Leo-

Sat Enterprises, a Washington-based

startup planning to launch a constella-

tion of 78 to 108 communications satel-

lites into low Earth orbit to offer secure,

high-speed connections for businesses

and government agencies.

LeoSat plans to provide Supernet with

more than three gigabits of capacity on

the global communications network it

is developing, which comprises satellites

built by Thales Alenia Space of France

and Italy based on the firm’s EliteBus

flown by Iridium Communications on

its Iridium Next constellation and O3B

Networks first-generation constellation.

LeoSat raised $11.5 million in a seed

investment round that included an un-

disclosed amount from Japanese sat-

ellite operator Sky Perfect JSAT. LeoSat

plans to raise $100 million in a Series A

round, which JSAT will anchor with “a

significant stake,” LeoSat chief executive

Mark Rigolle told SpaceNews.

In total, LeoSat plans to raise $3.75 bil-

lion with $2.5 billion coming from the

French investment bank BPIfrance to

establish what Rigolle calls “a true data

network in space.”

“Instead of thinking about a con-

stellation of satellites, think about a

LeoSat CEO Mark Rigolle, left, and OneWeb COO Samer Halawi, right, were the token LEO operators at Eurconsult’s World Satellite Business Week in Paris earlier this month.

LeoSat forges pact to transmit data for Pakistan’s Supernet

DEBRA WERNER

“Instead of thinking about a constellation of satellites, think about a constellation of routers in space which happen to be satellites.”

— Mark Rigolle, LeoSat CEO

SPACENEWS.COM | 25

THAL

ES A

LEN

IA S

PACE

/LEO

SAT

data would travel in Ka-band to a satel-

lite that would forward the data packets

using laser inter-satellite links to a satel-

lite near the destination where it would

travel down in Ka-band.

“All this happens in the speed of light,

which in space is it is roughly 300,000

kilometers per second,” Rigolle said. “Over

longer distances, we lose out compared

to fiber because the signal has to travel

up 1,400 kilometers and down on ei-

ther side. But we make up for that after

8,000 kilometers distance because we

are going faster in space.”

LeoSat’s constellation of 78 to 108 low-Earth-or-biting satellites are being built by Thales Alenia Space.

Before building its initial constellation, LeoSat plans to launch two smaller satellites in 2019 to demonstrate inter-satellite communications links.

“We can link Tokyo to Singapore to New York, depending on our cus-tomers’ needs, allowing rooftop-to-rooftop con-nectivity, which gives lower latency than is possible with fiber and higher security than is possible with any kind of patchwork network.”

Before building its initial constel-

lation, which includes 13 active satel-

lites and one orbiting spare in each of

six polar orbits, LeoSat plans to launch

two smaller satellites into adjacent or-

bital planes in 2019 to demonstrate its

inter-satellite communications links.

“There is nothing science fiction

about using lasers in space,” Rigolle

said. “We’ve noticed investors want to

see this fly before we’ll be able to raise

the large amounts of equity we need at

reasonable prices.”

After that demonstration, LeoSat plans

to complete financing the constellation

and begin producing “five, six, seven,

eight” satellites per month in late 2019

or early 2020.

Because LeoSat needs more money

than venture capital usually gives start-

ups, the firm is wooing strategic inves-

tors that could profit by using LeoSat’s

network or reselling its communica-

tions services. LeoSat’s target markets

include government agencies and large

enterprises in the oil and gas, financial,

maritime, media and telecommunica-

tions industries.

26 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

NAS

A

COMMENTARY By Mark R. Whittington

President Donald Trump signed an

executive order this summer recre-

ating the National Space Council,

a body that has not existed since George

H. W. Bush was president. A number of

space luminaries were present for the

event, including Apollo moonwalker

Buzz Aldrin.

Buzz’s presence was ironic since

he had been present both when Presi-

dent George H. W. Bush announced the

Space Exploration Initiative and when

President Barack Obama ended Project

What the National Space Council can do — and what it cannot

Constellation that was started by Presi-

dent George W. Bush. Whether this fact

constitutes an omen for things to come

cannot be properly evaluated.

The fact that Trump has revived the

Space Council and has placed it in the

charge of Vice President Mike Pence, a

space exploration enthusiast, suggests a

certain seriousness with which the ad-

ministration regards space as a venue for

government policy. Scott Pace, a NASA

veteran, has been named its executive

director. The Council will coordinate

U.S. President Donald Trump, surrounded by law-makers and astronauts, signs the executive order reestablishing the National Space Council.

SPACENEWS.COM | 27

space policy across the length and

breadth of the government, including

NASA, the military, and those depart-

ments that handle international affairs

and commerce.

It will have its work cut out for it.

NASA has been mired in confusion in

regards to exploring the heavens for a

long time. Commercial space, not a fac-

tor the last time a Space Council con-

vened, has become an increasing part

of space operations. A number of coun-

tries in Asia — China, Japan, and India

among them — aspire to be major play-

ers on the high frontier.

A National Space Council can im-

plement sound space policy only if it is

well run and only if such policy exists.

While the Space Council can offer good

advice, the formulation of space policy

is in the purview of the president of the

United States. He must articulate it and

he must sell it, to Congress, the com-

mercial sector, potential international

partners, and to the general public. If no

space policy exists or there is one that

is confused and dysfunctional, even the

most well run National Space Council

cannot make it work.

MARK WHITTINGTON, WHO WRITES

FREQUENTLY ABOUT SPACE AND POLITICS, HAS

JUST PUBLISHED A POLITICAL STUDY OF SPACE

EXPLORATION ENTITLED “WHY IS IT SO HARD

TO GO BACK TO THE MOON?” HE BLOGS AT

CURMUDGEONS CORNER.

Remember, 28 years ago a National

Space Council existed, chaired by a vice

president named Dan Quayle who, like

Pence, was a space enthusiast. Presi-

dent Bush had offered a bold new pro-

gram that set America’s course back to

the moon and on to Mars. But he for-

got to sell the Space Exploration Initia-

tive to Congress, the public, or even his

own NASA administrator, a man named

Richard Truly who found it to be a dis-

traction from the space station project

and worked to undermine the program.

When Bill Clinton replaced George H.

W. Bush as president, the space explo-

ration program he buried was a corpse,

already starved of funds and support.

The lesson therein is that President

Trump cannot just content himself with

making the big speech, the one that ev-

ery president makes when he is rolling

out some new space initiative, in imita-

tion of John F. Kennedy. He has to make

certain that whatever he proposes, a re-

turn to the moon, for example, is kept

on track and is not stymied by bureau-

cratic infighting. The National Space

Council can be an invaluable tool in

that regard, making sure that the various

President Trump cannot just content himself with making the big speech, the one that every president makes when he is rolling out some new space initiative, in imitation of John F. Kennedy.

government departments and agencies

are on the same page.

Congress has to be consulted where it

comes to space policy. To further the free

flow of dialogue it might be a good idea

to make the chairs and ranking mem-

bers of the House and Senate subcom-

mittees that oversee NASA part of the

Space Council. They can provide valu-

able input as to what can pass Congress

and what may need selling in real time.

Commercial space companies need a

seat at the table as well. The time is rap-

idly becoming past when the private sec-

tor is just a passive instrument to build

the hardware that NASA and the military

need for their operations. With SpaceX

aiming for a Mars colony and compa-

nies like Planetary Resources and Moon

Express planning the mining of the as-

teroids and the moon, respectively, the

commercial space sector is becoming

a group of active players in the opening

of the high frontier of space.

With a good, well-thought-out pol-

icy, a president willing to work for it and

sell it, and everyone seated at the table,

the National Space Council can make

proposals become reality. Otherwise,

as it was during the first Bush admin-

istration, the Space Council will be all

but useless.

28 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

NAS

A

COMMENTARY Ken Sembach

Are we alone? We are at a time in

history when we find ourselves

well positioned to answer this

haunting question. It is by no means

an easy one to answer, but the idea of

finding other worlds beyond our so-

lar system capable of supporting life,

or perhaps even evidence of life itself,

is no longer science fiction or a phil-

osophical conundrum—it is a science

experiment in the making.

In designing this experiment there is

an important lesson to be learned from

the search for the Higgs Boson, the fun-

damental particle that confers mass to

the entire universe. The Large Hadron

Collider (LHC), with which the Higgs was

discovered, was designed and built to

deliver a scientifically meaningful an-

swer to the question “Does the Higgs

Boson exist?” regardless of whether or

not the elusive particle was actually de-

tected. In other words, the constraints

that could be placed on a null result

were just as powerful, and meaningful,

as those resulting from an actual detec-

tion. The human and financial resources

invested in the LHC paid off famously,

resulting in the awarding of the 2013

Nobel Prize in Physics to François En-

glert and Peter Higgs, and forever deep-

ened our understanding of elementary

particle physics.

Here at the Space Telescope Sci-

ence Institute in Baltimore, Maryland,

we have been simulating what would

it take to make a definitive detection of

Earth-like worlds in nearby star systems,

or to rule them out with high confi-

dence. We expect such planets to ex-

ist, but don’t know for sure if there are

In searching for life, go big or stay home

some that are capable of supporting

life like that found on Earth. Just as the

Higgs was expected to exist but could

not be found (and confirmed) until the

proper experiment was performed,

we must design a similarly robust and

well-reasoned search to answer our

compelling question. We start with the

fact that we know where all stars within

the solar neighborhood (nearer than

about 50 light-years) are located. Any

further than that and exoEarths would

be too far away, and too faint, to study

in detail with even the most ambitious

telescopes being imagined. Thanks to

NASA’s Kepler mission, we know that

The hunt for exoplanets made impressive gains with the launch of NASA’s Kepler space telescope. The hunt will continue with the launch of JWST and WFIRST.

We could build a smaller telescope and hope we detect a handful of potentially Earth-like planets and hope that one is habitable. But hope is not a strategy.

SPACENEWS.COM | 29

NAS

A/ST

SCI

roughly 1 in 5 stars harbors a planet sim-

ilar in size and temperature to Earth, an

important boundary condition for wa-

ter to exist in liquid form. We then have

to consider that not all of those planets

would be aligned in a way to see them

at all times, add in the fact that many

nearby stars are different types and ages

than the sun, and recognize that their

planets may have different evolution-

ary paths than that of Earth. This leads

to the conclusion that the search for life

must be extensive enough to accommo-

date the possibility that the signatures

of life we seek may not be identical to

those found on Earth today.

Today, building on the technolo-

gies developed for the James Webb

Space Telescope (JWST) and using the

planned launch capabilities of the Space

Launch System (SLS), we now know we

can build what we need, a high-defini-

tion space telescope with a 12-15-meter

primary mirror that would systemati-

cally explore and characterize the at-

mospheres of nearly every sun-like star

system within 50 light years. This tele-

scope would also provide clues about

the surface features of these extraso-

lar worlds, perhaps even allowing us to

study seasonal changes. It is our best

shot at discovering life beyond the solar

system and offers unparalleled oppor-

tunities for scientific discoveries across

the entire field of astronomy.

We could build a smaller, less am-

bitious space observatory in the hope

that we’d detect a handful of potentially

Earth-like planets and hope that one is

habitable. But hope is not a strategy for

success. Neither the mighty Hubble nor

JWST, the largest space telescope yet

built, is capable of imaging Earth-like

planets around other stars. Moreover,

we need not only to detect potential

Earths, but also to characterize their

atmospheric signatures to assess the

KEN SEMBACH IS DIRECTOR OF THE SPACE

TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE IN BALTIMORE,

MARYLAND.

presence of life. Investment in an un-

derscoped observatory for this purpose

carries enormous financial and scien-

tific risks. Clearly, this epic experiment

should be done properly or not at all.

A large ultraviolet-optical-infrared

space observatory is the only facility that

has the capability to survey and perform

detailed follow-up characterizations of

at least several dozen, perhaps as many

as a hundred, exoEarths within the next

15-20 years. It is a serious candidate to

be the next flagship observatory in NA-

SA’s line of Great Observatories, and a

logical, bold successor to Hubble, JWST,

and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey

Telescope, the last of which is slated to

mature and test light-nulling technol-

ogies necessary for a life-finding tele-

scope to see exoEarths in the habitable

zones around their host stars.

A great nation has the imperative

to be bold in its exploration endeavors

and quests for knowledge. There is no

bolder pursuit than understanding our

place in the universe and the origins

of life itself. This quest will require the

skills and talents of industry, academia,

government centers, and policy makers,

united in a common purpose to leave a

legacy of inspiration and space explo-

ration for future generations. We know

how to answer the profound question –

“Are we alone?” – the answer to which

will change the course of history. We

just need to do it right. SN

Hubble and James Webb are big telescopes, but neither are capable of imaging Earth-like planets around other stars. To do that, astronomers would need a telescope with a 12-15-meter primary mirror.

With the proliferation of small

satellites, coupled with the

data demands from tradi-

tional larger satellites, the

industry is now facing a challenge to

transmit all the data generated to Earth

in a timely and efficient manner. This is

creating many new business models and

opportunities for investors.

With several thousand smallsats set

to launch over the next several years,

and the expanding capacity for those

spacecraft to generate larger and larger

amounts of data, the downlink bottleneck

would continue to grow but for emerg-

ing business models for processing and

transmitting data.

A key trend is the so-called Uberization

of ground stations and the optimization

of downlink networks. RBC Signals and

Atlas Space Operations are competitors

in the satellite downlink version of the

ride-hailing economy.

Using on-board signal processing and

machine-to-machine communication

built into the smallsats, downlink can be

further optimized to the preferred down-

link station. These models have been well

received by the market and both RBC

Signals and Atlas Space Operations have

been successfully raising money. Atlas has

a current funding round open that is be-

ing led by Space Angels. RBC Signals —in

which I’m an investor — closed on $1.5

million in funding in March. RBC’s round

was led by San Francisco-based Bee Part-

ners and other investors included Abstract

Ventures, Blacktop Capital, Comet Labs.

Another key invitation within down-

link optimization is changing the nature

of the ground stations themselves. Atlas

Satellite downlink in the ride-hailing era

attracting investors; Analytical Space filed

a form D document this month indicating

that they have raised $4.4 million in initial

funding. Notably, one of the lead investors

was the recently established MIT Venture

fund. I’m also an investor.

Laser-based transmission has one

distinct disadvantage in that cloud cover

can easily block transmission. However,

with the increase of machine-to-machine

in-space communication, data can be

routed around low Earth orbit until a

cloud-free, open downlink channel can

be found. Since the data-transmission

rates are so high, a small break in cloud

cover can permit successful downlink.

Another innovation minimizing the

need for downlink is more in-space

computing resources. Imagine that te-

lemetry from a smallsat constellation is

designed to answer a specific predictive

problem such as weather forecasting. If

the computing resources to answer such

a problem were in space, only the answer

to the question posed would need to be

transmitted down to Earth. Expect ad-

ditional business models to surface that

focus on in-space computing resources

and processing.

The most valuable part of any satellite

constellation is always the data. As the

hardware generating the data contin-

ues to proliferate, business models that

help optimize how that data is captured,

analyzed, processed and sent to Earth

will continue to evolve, creating many

opportunities for investors. SN

DYLAN TAYLOR IS A LEADING SPACE ANGEL

INVESTOR AND PATRON CHAIR OF THE

COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT FEDERATION.

announced this month a partnership with

NASA for portable ground-based receiv-

ers. Atlas will be working alongside NASA

Goddard Space Flight Center, according

to the announcement, to “advance the

development of the Atlas LINKSTM sys-

tem” which it describes as “a lightweight,

high-performance alternative to traditional

parabolic, mechanically steered radio

frequency (RF) satellite ground stations.”

Another model that has the possibility

to change the data transmission game is

lase- based downlink. Analytical Space, a

recent spin-out from Harvard University

and founded by White House Office of

Management and Budget alumni Justin

Oliveira and Dan Nevius, uses laser-based

transmission to vastly increase the amount

of data that can be transmitted per unit of

time. Their business model seems to be

30 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

WIKICOMMONS

CAPITAL CONTRIBUTIONS Dylan Taylor

SPACENEWS.COM | 31

ON THE HORIZON

8-12 SciTech Forumscitech.aiaa.org Kissimmee, FL

21-24 Pacific Telecommunications Conferenceptc.org Honolulu, HI

JANUARY

DATE EVENT PLACE

SEPTEMBER

25-29 International Astronautical Congresswww.iac2017.org

Adelaide, Australia

NOVEMBER

7-9 19th annual Global MilSatComwww.globalmilsatcom.com London, UK

8-9 Global SatShowglobalsatshow.com Istanbul, Turkey

2-3 Satellite Innovation Symposiumsatelliteinnovation.com

Mountain View, CA

11-12 ISPCSispcs.com Las Cruces, NM

DATE EVENT PLACE

24-26 Space Tech Expo Europewww.spacetechexpo.eu

Bremen, Ger-many

18-205th Additive Aerospace Summitinfocastinc.com/event/additive-aero-space/

Los Aneles, CA

19 Women in Aerospace Awards Dinnerwomeninaerospace.org/events/

Washington, DC

OCTOBER

5-7 SmallSat Symposiumsmallsatshow.com

Silicon Valley, CA

FEBRUARY

5-7 Spacecomspacecomexpo.com Houston, TX

DECEMBER

16-17 NewSpace Europenewspace-europe.spacefrontier.org/2017/

Luxembourg City

8-12 SciTech Forumscitech.aiaa.org Kissimmee, FL

12-15 Satellite 20182018.satshow.com

Washington, D.C.

28-29 Paris Space Weekparis-space-week.com Paris, France

MARCH

16-19 Space Symposiumspacesymposium.org

Colorado Springs, CO

APRIL

FOUST FORWARD Jeff Foust

What you think of Jim Bridenstine as

a potential NASA administrator de-

pends, it seems, on your relationship

to the space industry.

Inside the industry, the White House’s nom-

ination of Bridenstine early this month received

a warm reception. Individuals and organizations

lined up to support his nomination, citing his ex-

perience as a member of Congress, where he has

been active on space policy issues and willing to

talk with almost everyone on the subject.

Mike Gold, chairman of the FAA’s Commercial

Space Transportation Advisory Committee, re-

called his first meeting with Bridenstine. Gold put

90 minutes on a parking meter near Capitol Hill,

thinking that would be more than enough.

It wasn’t. “It was a two-hour conversation,” Gold

said at a space law forum in Washington Sept. 15.

“He owes me for that parking ticket.”

Outside the industry, where Bridenstine isn’t

well known except in his home district in Okla-

homa, the reaction has been different. Many have

pointed to comments he made on the House floor

in 2013, where he claimed global temperatures

weren’t changing and any changes in the past

could be correlated to natural, and not human,

activity. Headlines declared Bridenstine a “climate

change denier.”

Bridenstine has stayed quiet since the White

House announced his nomination, but offered

some opinions in a questionnaire he submitted

to the Senate Commerce Committee in advance

of a confirmation hearing. He focused on both

his experience and his big-picture views of what

NASA could do with him at the helm.

“With NASA’s global leadership, we will pioneer

the solar system, sending humans back to the Moon,

The political climate of a NASA administrator nomination

to Mars, and beyond. This requires a consistent,

sustainable strategy for deep space exploration,”

he wrote in the questionnaire.

He also, somewhat indirectly, addressed the

question of climate science. “NASA must continue

studying our home planet. Unfortunately, Earth

science sometimes gets pitted against planetary

science for resources,” he wrote. “NASA must con-

tinue to advance both Earth science and planetary

science for the benefit of mankind.”

Bridenstine tried to illustrate that by noting that

Mars was once a warmer, wetter world. “At some

point, Mars changed dramatically and we should

strive to understand why,” he wrote. “Studying other

planets can inform our understanding of Earth.”

That’s true, although the mechanisms that

shaped Martian climate, such as solar wind strip-

ping away its atmosphere, don’t apply to Earth and

the growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in

its atmosphere. Bridenstine faced more criticism

for his views: “NASA nominee wants to study cli-

mate change — on Mars,” read one headline in an

environmental publication. (Good thing NASA has

been funding scientists to do just that for years.)

While Bridenstine has been limited in what he

can say, others have stepped up to his defense.

“As I read some of the material that’s been coming

out of the media, I don’t recognize the man that’s

being described. I just don’t,” Gold said. “If you care

about Earth science, that’s a reason to vote for Jim

Bridenstine, not against him.”

What Bridenstine believes about climate change

and the importance of Earth science may, in the

long run, be irrelevant. How much NASA will get

to spend on Earth science, including missions and

other research linked to climate change, will largely

be shaped by White House policy decisions and

congressional appropriations.

“Everybody that’s interacted with him say he’s

level-headed, pragmatic, thoughtful, has given a

lot of attention to what’s needed for a good future

space program,” John Logsdon, founding director

and professor emeritus of the Space Policy Institute

at George Washington University, said of Briden-

stine during a Sept. 12 panel discussion held by

Politico. “I think he is a perfectly reasonable choice.”

These days, “perfectly reasonable” can be con-

sidered high praise. SN

32 | SPACENEWS 09.25.17

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