World of Satellite-News Updates

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April 21st, 2013
BringCom... Optic + Satellite Circuit Emphasis (Connectivity)

BringCom, Inc. has been awarded a new contract and several contract extensions by...
...prime U.S. Government contractors. The awards, collectively valued at $3.8 million, call for BringCom to provide satellite and fiber optic circuit services to U.S. Department of Defense-related projects operating in Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean/Latin America regions. The satellite contracts use BringCom’s teleport facilities in Djibouti City, Republic of Djibouti, and Sterling, Virginia, USA, with connectivity through the Apstar 7 and Amazonas 2 satellites. BringCom will also provide managed fiber-optic connectivity from Africa and the United States to customer-designated termination points under these contracts.

“These new or extended contracts reinforce BringCom’s position as the reliable provider of carrier-grade fiber-optic and satellite services to U.S. Government prime contractors and international customers operating in these global telecommunications markets,” said Fabrice Langreney, President and CEO of BringCom. “The awards of additional contracts from international customers with demanding requirements validate BringCom’s strategy and investment in these regions. They are also a reflection of the dedication of BringCom’s staff and partners in meeting and exceeding the needs of its customers with very challenging telecommunication applications.”

The contracts use BringCom’s extensive local partnerships in the Africa and Middle Eastern regions. They include connectivity, construction of in-country facilities, and continuing maintenance activities by BringCom’s satellite and fiber network-capable Network Operations Centers (NOC) in both the United States and Djibouti.

 

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April 21st, 2013
NewCom International + XipLink... Added Value @ No Added Cost (SATCOM)

In a rapidly changing technological world, speed and costs are everything in the world of connectivity.
NewCom International and XipLink have teamed up to increase the bottom line QoE (Quality of Experience) for clients by adding value to their broadband experience at no additional cost, while preparing their network architecture for further efficiency enhancements with optional equipment.

Jaime Munera, Director of Product Development & IT of NewCom International, said, "The beauty of this technology is we have the infrastructure in place to enhance the service given to all our clients on the iDirect platform in USA, Latin America and Africa, thus increasing their bandwidth efficiency. When our customers choose NewCom's iDirect-based service for your satellite communications needs, they automatically benefit from our built-in WAN optimization solution that optimizes outbound traffic across all of our multiple networks."

Munera explains that customers can also benefit even more with optional low cost equipment at their remote end for a 2-sided boost in performance and the result is an increased QoE on as much as 30 percent.

Jack Waters CEO of XipLink said, "There was no hesitation on the part of NewCom when it became apparent that this technology was available to improve customer quality of experience (QoE). The NewCom technical team was extremely diligent and helpful adjusting and improving the technology to insure their customers received the best possible service benefit from XipLink's products."

 

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April 21st, 2013
Abilis Systems + MaxLinear... Losing The Head Over This... (SatBroadcasting™—Headless Gateway)

Abilis Systems and MaxLinear (NYSE: MXL) have announced the world’s...
...first eight-channel satellite headless gateway reference platform. This “headless gateway” platform addresses the ever-increasing demand for viewing of high-quality content on multiple screens. This platform is not directly connected to a TV, like a set-top box, but is network connected and accessible by multiple screens in a home. Acting as a media server, these headless gateway platforms are optimized for SAT>IP and DLNA services. The gateway reference platform converts satellite TV content into IP packets for streaming in home, thereby enabling users to enjoy the benefit of watching today’s DTH services on televisions as well as on IP-enabled devices such as tablets, laptops, smartphones, game consoles and other platforms.

The gateway platform has four RF inputs to be used with existing satellite dishes and low-noise block (LNB) downconverters. It combines the high throughput of the Abilis TB101 network processor with the MxL584 receiver to realize unprecedented low-power consumption and a very low bill-of-materials (BOM). This new platform offers satellite operators a cost, performance, and size-optimized solution to expand their TV offering to tablets and smartphones. The reference platform is very small and can be designed with multiple applications in mind, for example with a single LNB (using DiSEqC) up to four LNBs. The small design is enabled by MaxLinear’s highly integrated MxL584 Full-Spectrum Capture™ (FSC™) DVB-S/S2 receiver. The four-input MxL584 receiver integrates tuners required for multi-inputs, eight demodulators, and all the active front-end components, including the low-noise amplifiers (LNA) into a compact and cost-effective 10x10 QFN package.

The TB101 integrates a high-throughput demux supporting up to 800Mbps in eight independent TV streams, a CAS to DRM crypto engine and a Gigabit Ethernet. The chip transforms eight HD TV channels into IP format consuming less than 500mW, using only few DMIPS per channel.

 

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Astrium... Passing With Flying Colors (Satellites)

The Galileo In-Orbit Verification (IOV) In-Orbit Test Review Board, held on April 9, 2013, at...
...the European Space Agency (ESA) ESTEC facility in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, has been declared a full success. The satellites, built by Astrium for validation of the European satellite navigation system Galileo, passed all their milestones. ESA confirmed that the satellites are fully operational after the launch and are capable of fulfilling the intended mission lifetime. With this review, Astrium has demonstrated that the satellites are operating correctly and as predicted in ground-based tests, showing that the satellites fulfil their technical requirements. Routine operations are now able to take advantage of the lessons learnt during the in-orbit testing.


ESA praised the excellent performance of the Astrium IOV satellites and commented that the review was exemplary. Compliments were also received from the European Commission and from the Galileo satellite operations team. With this initial Galileo space segment, Astrium has laid the foundation for the complete high-performance Galileo system. The IOV spacecraft represent the result of an extensive and complex development of the first navigation satellites and related technologies in Europe.
For Astrium, the development of the IOV satellites has a truly European dimension; it has involved hundreds of highly skilled people and 43 companies from 15 European countries.

The Astrium-built Galileo IOV satellites represent the first European navigation satellites with full functionality, initiating the build-up of the operational constellation. The first two IOV satellites were launched on October 21st in 2011 aboard the first Soyuz launch from Kourou. Both are well performing in orbit and have been transmitting all defined signals for more than a year now.

The second pair of IOV satellites was launched on a Soyuz rocket from Kourou on October 12, 2012, following a smooth, completely problem-free launch campaign. The following in-orbit of tests these satellites, reviewing the platform, payload and security issues, were completely by the end of February and showed the satellites and payloads are performing well. This was formally confirmed by the Review Board of April 9th.

The IOV constellation is now in place with four satellites in two orbital planes, allowing the validation of the Galileo system. On 1March 12th, the first precise 3D positioning purely based on the four IOV satellites was derived with the Astrium navigation team in Ottobrunn (Germany) performing related data analysis to verify the Galileo signal and system performance.

 

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April 22nd, 2013
NASA’s IRIS Is 20/20 In Preparation For Launch

Both these phenomena can add to the turbulence of the region and IRIS’s high-resolution spectra and images will be able to tease apart just which forms of energy cause which effects.
Understanding the interface between the photosphere and corona remains a fundamental challenge in solar and heliospheric science. The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission opens a window of discovery into this crucial region by tracing the flow of energy and plasma through the chromosphere and transition region into the corona using spectrometry and imaging.

IRIS is designed to provide significant new information to increase the understanding of energy transport into the corona and solar wind and provide an archetype for all stellar atmospheres.

The unique instrument capabilities, coupled with state of the art 3-D modeling, will fill a large gap in our knowledge of this dynamic region of the solar atmosphere. The mission will extend the scientific output of existing heliophysics spacecraft that follow the effects of energy release processes from the sun to Earth.

The IRIS satellite design is derived from several previous NASA/LMSAL spacecraft. By re-using prior designs Lockheed Martin was able to reduce technical, scheduling and cost risks. Solar arrays omitted for clarity. Credit: LMSAL

IRIS is NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph. Its primary goal is to understand how heat and energy move through the lower levels of the solar atmosphere.

IRIS is a class of spacecraft called a Small Explorer, which NASA defines as costing less than $120 million.

Lockheed Martin (LM) Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in LM’s Advanced Technology Center is the principle investigator institution and has overall responsibility for the mission, with major contributions from Lockheed Martin Civil Space, NASA Ames, Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory, Montana State University, Stanford University and the University of Oslo.


IRIS weighs 440 pounds. It is approximately 7 feet (2.1 meters) long and, with its solar panels extended, is a little over 12 feet (3.7 meters) across.

IRIS will make use of high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how matter, light, and energy move from the sun’s 6000 K surface to its million K outer atmosphere or corona. A fundamentally mysterious region that helps drive heat into the corona, this area has been notoriously hard to study. IRIS will be able to tease apart what's happening there better than has ever been done before.

To do this, IRIS will observe the lowest part of the sun's atmosphere: the chromosphere, an expanse of ionized gas or plasma lying just above the sun's surface, and the transition region, where the chromosphere transitions into the even hotter corona above. This interface region lies at the core of many outstanding questions about the sun's atmosphere, such as how the sun creates giant explosions like solar flares or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or how solar material in the corona reaches millions of degrees, several thousand times hotter than the surface of the sun itself.

Much of this coronal heating begins in the chromosphere and transition region. These highly dynamic regions are constantly in motion, so it isn't simple to profile temperatures with respect to position. Indeed, a wide range of temperatures can occur at similar heights, with different swaths of material propelled upward and downward in response to the release of magnetic energy, as well as various types of plasma waves. This moving interface region covers a wide range of heights above the sun’s surface, extending over several thousand miles. Throughout this height range, not only do the temperatures vary dramatically from 5000 Kelvin to almost a million degrees, but there are also enormous density contrasts, with certain areas up to a million times more dense than others.


This turbulent interface region contains more mass than does all the rest of the corona and heliosphere, which extends to the very edge of the solar system. Given how much material is there, the chromosphere requires a heating rate at least ten times greater than that of the corona itself.

One of IRIS's main science objectives will be to study how this foundational region of the heliosphere contributes mass and energy to the atmosphere above it, depositing so much heat into the corona. IRIS observations will mesh with those from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which launched in 2010. SDO observes the sun's surface and the corona, while IRIS will observe the crucial region in between the photosphere and corona at much higher resolution than ever before captured. IRIS is what's called an imaging spectrograph, which means it will provide both images and what are called spectra, which splits light into its various colors. Each line of light carries information about different materials of the sun and how they move, thus they can be used to probe physical characteristics in the solar atmosphere such as density, temperature and velocity.

IRIS will attempt to distinguish between two mechanisms that may be responsible for powering this region: magnetic field reconnection and dissipation of waves that travel through the solar atmosphere. Both these phenomena can add to the turbulence of the region and IRIS’s high-resolution spectra and images will be able to tease apart just which forms of energy cause which effects.

Such information will also help scientists examine how the solar material and its attendant magnetic fields contribute to eruptions on the sun such as solar flares and CMEs. This may increase our ability to forecast such space weather, which can disable satellites, cause power grid failures, and disrupt GPS services.

Lastly, understanding our own star better will help deepen our insight into atmospheres at distant stars as well.

 

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April 23rd, 2013

Raytheon... Math Moves... (STEM)

Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) is highlighting the importance of math to the...
...21st century workforce in observance of Mathematics Awareness Month. As part of the company's MathMovesU® initiative—which aims to inspire student interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education—Raytheon announced it is extending its title sponsorship of the MATHCOUNTS® National Competition through 2018. It is also launching a new video series designed to engage middle school students in math challenges and is releasing an infographic—"The 21st Century Workforce: Skills Gap and the STEM Dilemma"—to raise awareness of the importance of math to the United States.

MATHCOUNTS: The company has extended its title sponsorship of the Raytheon MATHCOUNTS National Competition through 2018. MATHCOUNTS is a national middle school coaching and competitive mathematics program that promotes mathematics achievement through a series of fun and engaging "bee" style contests. The program exists in all 50 states plus U.S. territories and the Department of Defense and State Department schools. Raytheon's support will help the organization meet its mission of providing fun and challenging math programs for U.S. middle school students to increase their academic and professional opportunities.

INFOGRAPHIC: "The 21st Century Workforce: Skills Gap and the STEM Dilemma," outlines the current workforce skills gap and the pressing need to engage students with STEM education. Raytheon believes that in order to build the next pipeline of technologists and innovators to ensure a competitive U.S. workforce and future economic growth, students must be shown the relevance of STEM in their everyday lives and future careers.

VIDEO SERIES: Raytheon launched a new video series that explores "Math Mysteries" using a high-energy game show format to engage middle school students in math challenges. The video series, part of Raytheon's MathMovesU initiative, features interactive learning programs—including the traveling exhibit MathAlive!™ and Raytheon's Sum of all Thrills™ experience at INNOVENTIONS at Epcot®—as well as scholarships, sponsorships and events.

Throughout the month of April Raytheon is engaging the MathMovesU community of educators, parents, non-profit partners, policy-makers and students to explore the different efforts under way to improve STEM education and inspire the next generation of innovators.

 

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April 23rd, 2013

ETL Systems... A Prestigious Pat On The Back (Award)

Growing overseas sales representing 75 percent of total revenues have helped...
...Herefordshire-based ETL Systems win the prestigious Queens Award for International Trade for a third time. ETL is an experienced global designer and manufacturer of RF distribution equipment for satellite communications. Their 69-strong business is located close to the BT satellite earth station at Madley, in England, and has a purpose built secure factory offering 3D mechanical, RF and Microwave CAD design, along with full testing facilities. The successful British brand, recognized internationally for quality, has posted impressive new or increasing orders in the Ukraine, Slovenia, Poland, Argentina, Indonesia, Japan, New Caledonia, and Chile and significantly increased sales in the U.S. It is a satellite specialist and designs and manufactures equipment for the broadcast, telecoms, satellite communication and government sectors.

Earlier this year ETL opened a brand new North American headquarters in the U.S. to take advantage of its ongoing and rapid expansion on the continent. More than 40 percent of its annual revenues now come from the region. ETL has been designing and manufacturing RF equipment since 1984 and has a large team which includes dedicated in-house engineers specialising in originating RF design concepts, and enhancing existing products.

 

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April 25th, 2013
Arianespace... Four To GO... (Launch)

The initial four O3b spacecraft to be launched by Arianespace on...
...Soyuz have arrived in French Guiana, taking the global satellite operator one step closer to its goal of deploying a next-generation network that provides emerging market customers with access to fast, flexible and affordable connectivity. These satellites are now in the Spaceport’s S1 payload processing facility near the city of Kourou, having been transferred by road after arriving aboard a chartered Antonov An-124 cargo jetliner at Cayenne’s Félix Eboué airport earlier in the week.


Two of O3b’s four satellites delivered to French Guiana are unloaded in their protective shipping containers from the An-124 cargo jetliner (photo at left). In the photo at right, all four spacecraft are ready for the convoy from Cayenne’s Félix Eboué airport to the Spaceport.
Photo courtesy of Arianespace.
Arianespace’s Soyuz mission for O3b is scheduled for June, marking the medium-lift vehicle’s fifth flight from French Guiana since its 2011 introduction at the equatorial launch site. O3b’s Ka-band satellites were built by prime contractor Thales Alenia Space,and are to be positioned at a medium-orbit altitude of approximately 8,060 km., offering high speed, low cost, low-latency Internet and telecommunications services to emerging markets. In addition to the first batch of spacecraft lofted by the upcoming Soyuz mission in June, another Arianespace flight is scheduled to obit four more O3b satellites later this year, followed by an additional four of the spacecraft in 2014.s

 

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April 26th, 2013
Eutelsat... Aye, Lassies + Laddies, Let's Stay In Touch... (SATCOM)

Eutelsat Broadband’s satellite business solution is helping workers from...
...Ross-Shire Engineering stay in touch while constructing water treatment plants for Scottish Water Solutions II in some of the remotest areas of the country. The engineers use the Eutelsat satellite broadband service for email and accessing systems at head office as well as for Voice over IP telephone calls while on site.

So far installed at five sites, including the Shetland Isles and on remote areas of the west coast, by Scottish reseller Internet Anywhere, Eutelsat provides an always-on satellite service delivering speeds of up to 20Mbps downstream and 6Mbps upstream, with no need for a telephone line. The equipment comprises of a small satellite dish and a modem or wifi router, which connects to the computer. The company first turned to Eutelsat when it found that its engineers were struggling to get a mobile 3G signal for telephone calls or data at some of the remotest Scottish Water Solution II construction sites.

“Internet Anywhere recommended the solution and installed the system for us and it just worked without any hassle,” said George Phimister, Project Manager at Ross-Shire Engineering. “Now we are using it at several sites, even the less remote ones because the service is so fast to install. Using traditional broadband providers, we had to wait days or even weeks for an internet connection. Today we just make a call, the installer arrives and within an hour or so we are up and running.”

Ross-shire Engineering has an average of 10 workers onsite at any one time building drinking water treatment plants for Scottish Water and the team are able to connect to the Eutelsat system via the wireless router and then access their office systems via VPN or make VoIP calls. The service uses Eutelsat’s KA-SAT High Throughput satellite, which ushered in a new era of competitively priced, satellite-delivered services for consumers, businesses and broadcasters when it was launched in 2011. The satellite forms the cornerstone of a 350m euros state-of-the-art communications infrastructure, which includes a sophisticated on-ground network made up of eight main satellite gateways across Europe connected to the Internet by a fibre backbone ring.

 

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April 26th, 2013
W.B. Walton Enterprises.. A New Fabric @ Half The Price


The quality of the fabric is far superior to any of our competitor’s fabrics and will be roughly half the price of the PTFE...

W. B. Walton Enterprises, Inc. (Walton De-Ice) is announcing a new fabric for use in making the Snow Shield Covers. David Walton stated, “We are very excited with the results that we have seen so far in both C-and Ku-band with the new fabric.

“The mechanical characteristics and Rf transparency is almost the same as the PTFE (Gore-Tex) fabric that we have been using since coming out with the Snow Shield Cover 18 years ago.


“The quality of the fabric is far superior to any of our competitor’s fabrics and will be roughly half the price of the PTFE (Gore-Tex) Snow Shield Cover. With the new fabric, we will still be able to offer it as a passive system or utilize both Electric and Gas Heater De-Icing Systems along with the Ice Quake De-Icing System.

“The next step is to do testing at Ka-band with the new fabric. We will be adding this new fabric to our line up of Snow Shield Covers/De-Icing System solutions to continue to give our customer’s choices for their de-icing system requirements.”

With over 32 years of experience in battling the elements, Walton De-Ice continues to expand its product line to give the customer even more options to keep their VSAT and Large Satellite Earth Station Antennas operational during the harshest of environmental conditions.

Walton will be exhibiting at IBC. They will be in Hall 1 booth number A62.