Military/Aerospace Electronics

The European Commission, the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the European Space Agency (ESA) are joining forces to help strengthen the continent’s space sector. The European organisations signed a collaboration arrangement that will include the involvement of SMEs and start-ups. They say that – despite existing funding initiatives such as CASSINI, with its €1 billion investment capacity – “access to ...

Leonardo is highlighting the UK’s role in the recently launched NASA PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Climate, ocean Ecosystem) satellite, which will study the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. It launched at the end of last week, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida (right). The craft has since successfully made contact with ground stations ...

Airbus U.S. Space & Defense has completed a deal with Eutelsat OneWeb to purchase its 50% share of the Airbus OneWeb Satellites (AOS) joint venture. Specifically, it will the become the sole owner of AOS and also its satellite manufacturing facility in Merritt Island, in the part of Florida dubbed Space Coast. The AOS joint venture was originally established in ...

Powell Electronics is now supplying cylindrical Series II MIL-DTL-26482 connectors from Conesys, for commercial, aerospace and military applications. This style of connector, Conesys AE7 series, has a bayonet coupling and rear-removable crimp contacts. Shells are aluminium or stainless, said Powell (the catalogue linked below says mild steel or stainless, Electronics Weekly has requested clarification), and there are four receptacle-mounting styles: ...

NASA, Texas Instruments and others in the space industry have created a qualification standard for using plastic packaged ICs in space: Qualified Manufacturers List Class P – QML Class P. “QML Class P was designed in league with NASA and other industry experts as a plastic packaging standard for space electronic,” TI told Electronics Weekly. The standard is based on ...

The UK Space Agency (UKSA) has signed an agreement to join EISCAT, the international space observatory. And it has also announced £5.5 million financial backing for Arctic research. EISCAT operates four radar sites across Norway, Sweden and Finland, and it studies the ionosphere, the outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere which forms the boundary with outer space. It is also the ...

The SCSIFlash-Fast is a swap-in upgrade/replacement for electromechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) that use the small computer system interface (SCSI).  Initially available with 68- and 80-pin connectors, this generation of HDD has write speeds of up to 80MByte/sec, increased from 10MByte/sec. The drive uses proven SCSI drive architecture and industrial CFast or M.2 SSD memory, and has storage capacities ranging ...

AST SpaceMobile, which aims to build a space-based cellular broadband network accessible by everyday smartphones, has announced strategic investment from AT&T, Google and Vodafone. The goal is for its in-orbit technology to eliminate cellular connectivity gaps around the world. In addition to the $155 million invested by the companies, AST SpaceMobile plans to draw up to $51.5 million from the ...

Quindar, the maker of a platform to monitor and automate satellite operations, has closed an oversubscribed $6 million seed extension round.   The funding was led by Fuse with continuing investment from Y-Combinator and Funders Club. “This infusion of funding will propel our mission to manage satellites as efficiently as servers by utilizing AI-driven insights and operations to revolutionize the ...

A Space Enterprise Lab (SEL) has opened at Adastral Park in Suffolk, the latest addition to the Satellite Applications Catapult’s network of such facilities. The idea is for the SEL to provide a range of capabilities or services for local space sector companies, enabling them to work together more effectively. Part of a national linked network of 13 such facilities, ...