Arianespace assessing impact of crewed Soyuz failure on satellite-launching variant

Arianespace said Oct. 11 it’s too soon to say whether the Soyuz-ST rockets it uses to launch satellites from South America will be grounded following the failure of a Russian Soyuz-FG rocket carrying crew to the International Space Station.

SES’s future GEO satellites will be more like O3b, CEO says

Fresh off the success of a recent contract win to connect IBM Cloud customers with O3b satellites, SES’s chief executive said many of the operator’s future geostationary satellites will have attributes of O3b to appeal to more cloud networks.

SES wants fleet of identical, interchangeable satellites

Instead of buying individual satellites tailored for a specific job at a precise orbital location, fleet operator SES wants homogenous satellites with digitally processed payloads it can reconfigure in orbit to perform any job.

MEO startup Methera plans “high density” HTS constellation

In medium Earth orbit, the only system providing satellite broadband today is SES Networks’ constellation of 16 O3b satellites. A British startup with its own 16-satellite constellation idea wants to change that.

SES lowers video forecast, gives glowing review of O3b mPower progress

Satellite fleet operator SES of Luxembourg lowered its revenue forecast for its television broadcast market July 27 while forecasting stable growth of data services.

SES, with FCC’s blessing, says O3b constellation can reach global coverage

SES says its constellation of medium Earth orbit O3b satellites now has the ability to expand from an equatorial system to a global system thanks to new approvals from U.S. telecom regulators.

O3b MEO constellation grows to 16 with latest Soyuz launch

A Soyuz rocket from Arianespace successfully delivered four telecommunications satellites into medium Earth orbit for fleet operator SES.

O3b’s Steve Collar to lead SES, Karim Michel Sabbagh stepping down

Satellite fleet operator SES on Feb. 12 announced that CEO Karim Michel Sabbagh will be leaving the company April 5, exactly four years after assuming the position.

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Google using O3b satellites to connect Project Loon over Puerto Rico

Google’s experimental high-altitude balloon project is using connectivity from O3b satellites to provide emergency communications in hurricane-ravished Puerto Rico.

Arianespace wins contracts for O3b and SES-17 satellites

Satellite operator SES has selected Arianespace to launch a fifth set of O3b satellites as well as a large geostationary orbit communications satellite, the companies announced Sept. 12.

SES building a 10-terabit O3b ‘mPower’ constellation

Fleet operator SES placed a seven-satellite order with Boeing Satellite Systems International to build a second generation of O3b satellites that will have more than triple the capacity of ViaSat’s future ViaSat-3 constellation.

SES Government Solutions gets DoD task order for additional O3b beam

The additional connectivity will be provided via SES’s medium-Earth-orbit (MEO) O3b fleet as part of a high-throughput, low-latency satellite communications system SES GS is providing to the Pentagon, the company said.

SES taps O3b’s Steve Collar to lead all non-television business

Global satellite fleet operator SES has elevated the role of O3b Networks Chief Executive Steve Collar to one that oversees all of the company’s non-video broadcast business.

FCC gets five new applications for non-geostationary satellite constellations

Boeing’s plan to deploy a constellation of V-band satellites in non-geostationary orbit has prompted at least five companies, including SpaceX and OneWeb, to file me-too proposals with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

ViaSat and O3b, now distant neighbors, eye confrontation in medium-Earth orbit

ViaSat Inc and SES-owned O3b Ltd., two satellite fleet operators providing commercial Ka-band broadband from different orbital vantage points, look to become direct competitors based on new satellite constellations both are proposing to U.S. regulators.