Military/Aerospace Electronics

Wyld Networks has officially launched its satellite IoT service, enabling battery-based applications to be deployed in remote locations without terrestrial connectivity. Example applications using the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites could be utility and energy companies monitoring their systems and equipment without site visits, data being collected for agriculture and environmental management, and goods and assets being tracked on sea ...

The long-anticipated first satellite launch from European soil – involving a Virgin Orbit launch from Spaceport Cornwall – has been put back once again, this time into 2023. While not all licensing for the launch has been completed, it also seems that technical issues have arisen, delaying the process. The Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket is air-launched from Cosmic Girl – ...

Reflex Aerospace, the German startup satellite manufacturer, has announced it has raised €7 million in a first funding round. The company – along with Mynaric, Isar Aerospace and SES – is part of the joint venture UNIO, which aims to build a European satellite constellation for broadband internet access. This was actually the first of two rounds of funding as ...

The Square Kilometre Array radio telescope got its next official launch this week, when director-general Philip Diamond travelled to the site where SKA-Low (below) will be built in Western Australia and council chair Catherine Cesarsky went to the SKA-Mid (right) site in South Africa’s Northern Cape. “The SKA project has been many years in the making,” said Cesarsky. “Today, we ...

Texas Instruments has expanded its space-grade analogue portfolio with devices in radiation-hardened plastic packages. “TI developed a device screening specification called ‘space high-grade in plastic’ [‘SHP’] for radiation-hardened products and introduced ADCs that meet the SHP qualification,” according to the company. “TI also introduced product families to the radiation-tolerant Space EP [‘enhanced plastic’] portfolio.” The SHP specification includes BGA packages ...

The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has officially broken ground on its Facility for Radiation Tolerance Research on Electronics for Space and Strategic Systems – dubbed FORTRESS – at the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The 6,200-square-foot, $4.5 million facility will be located next to the AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate Deployable Structures Laboratory. It will enable researchers ...

European Ministers, including the UK – which is a member of the European Space Agency (ESA) – have agreed to increase ESA’s budget by 17% compared to the last equivalent Ministerial-level meeting in 2019. The decision was taken at the ESA Council in Paris, and the ESA secured €16.8 billion funding (up from €14.4 billion in 2019), with the UK ...

To help grow the nation’s space sector, the UK government has officially announced the formation of a new Space Partnership. The body is intended to bring together industry, academia and government stakeholders to work together to realise the government’s National Space Strategy, which was first announced in September 2021. It will be co-funded by the UK Space Agency and hosted ...

Satellite Vu, the British Earth Observation company, has signed its first major customer through its Early Access Option Programme (EAOP). Described as multi-million pound purchase option, the client is the Japan Space Imaging Corporation (JSI), which provides geospatial information, including satellite data, to civil and commercial markets in Japan. Basically, JSI will be expanding its global imaging portfolio with the ...

QuadSAT is productising its drone-based antenna and radio frequency test and measurement system, the Danish company has announced. Previously, available only as a managed service delivered by QuadSAT engineers, it says the system can now be also be acquired for third-party testing needs. Quadsat’s system consists of the drones integrated with a custom RF payload, together with automation and measurement ...