Orbits: News Briefs…

PARIS, FRANCE: August 17, 2007—Satnews Daily—The 5th World Satellite Business Week symposium will occur at The Westin in Paris from September 3 through September 6. The event comprises the 5th World Symposium for Market Forecasts for Satellite Business (a one-half day) as well as the 11th World Summit for Satellite Financing, which includes the World Space Insurance Forum. Euroconsult organizes the program in partnership with SES, Milbank, Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems, Marsh, Arianespace, ISB, ILS and SpaceIsle. To learn more,



ALASKA: August 13, 2007—Satnews Daily—Providing direct Internet service to sections of Southeast Alaska is At Contact Communications. As initially reported in the Alaska Journal of Commerce, a co-founder of EchoStar and part owner of Ketchikan TV LLC, David Drucker, manages this firm. Now his company has teamed with WildBlue to provide Internet service to some of the most rural areas of Alaska. At Contact Communications has an ambitious plan. They hope to launch 7 satellites. All will offer Ka-band service, which enables faster, broadband satellite communications with speeds up to 1.5 Mbps possible. His only competitor is HughesNet and their current satellite direct service for direct DSL broadband service. Drucker believes once the new satellites are in service, connections will possess speeds similar to T1.



KANATA, ONTARIO, CANADA: August 14, 2007—Satnews Daily—Calian Technologies is getting set to provide the Radio Frequency Systems (RFS) Systems for 2 earth stations. This is thanks to a new contract valued at approximately $10 million from Inmarsat. The firm’s SED division will build the system that will be designed for Inmarsat’s new I-4 earth station located in Paumalu, Hawaii. The high availability RFS will support tracking, telemetry and command (TT&C) as well as communications gateway requirements. Inmarsat plans to launch their third I-4 satellite next year.



August 13, 2007—Satnews Daily–Forrester Research and Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) both predict enormous gains for HDTV adoption into homes. By year’s end, DEG predicts more than 52 million homes will have HDTVs. That represents penetration into 36 percent of all homes in the U.S. In fact, DEC also states 20 percent of U.S. homes will have more than one HDTV. Forrester Research adds the HDTV growth has been much faster than their original forecasts. Expect more and more demand on satellite delivery of HD content. One reason? According to the Consumer Electronics Association, only half of those who HDTVs actually have HD content playing on their sets.



JAKARTA, INDONESIA: August 13, 2007–Satnews Daily—A contract has been awarded to JAMPRO Antennas of Sacramento by the leading Indonesian TV network, Global TV. The work requested is for the engineering of a high-powered UHF antenna system. The complete package will include a Jampro model JUHD skew fire broadband UHF panel antenna, 400 meters of Jampro WR-15000 high-power, low-loss Waveguide and a Jampro model RWCC constant impedance combiner. The RWCC will be a combo of two Global UHF channels (E37 and #51) each at 120kW, 240kW total input power. Side-mount or top-mount is available for the JUHD broadband UHF panel antenna, which is DTV-ready for UHF bands IV and V. Varying levels of vertical polarization can be configured for the horizontally polarized antenna.



MELBOURNE, FLORIDA & CINCINNATI, OHIO: August 13, 2007—David Cunningham has just been named the vice president of Human Resources at the Harris Corporation. He’ll be responsible for the company’s Broadcast Communications Business. He joined Harris in 1987 and was, formerly, the director of Human Resources for the company.



GERMANTOWN, MARYLAND: August 14, 2007—Satnews Daily—Financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2007, have been released by Hughes Communications, Inc. Hughes Network Systems’ revenue increased by 12 percent over Q2 of 2006 to $234 million. Operating income increased by 449 percent to $20 million, up from $4 million. EBITDA (earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation, amortization and equity incentive plan compensation) more than doubled to $32 million. Net income increased to $11 million as compared to a loss of $4 million during Q2 of 2006. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 12 percent to $32 million in the second quarter of 2007. The key contributor to revenue was the consumer/SMB and mobile satellite business, producing more than 30,000 new subscribers during Q2 of 2007, the subscriber base growing to 353,000, for a growth of 18 percent of the subscriber base at June 30, 2006. Mobile satellite business revenue reveals growth of 88 percent to $35 million during Q2 of 2007.



RICHMOND, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA: August 14, 2007—The integration and testing of Canada’s nextgen Earth observation satellite has been completed by McDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, Ltd. (MDA). Known as RADARSAT-2, this sophisticated satellite was developed by MDA in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). CSA’s David Florida Laboratory in Ottawa handled the integration and testing processes. The plan is for RADARSAT-2 to replace RADARSAT-1 when launched and make available to customers an expanded range of high quality radar imagery, regardless of the time of day or weather conditions. A growing global network of 36 ground stations will deliver the data. The RADARSAT-2’s launch date has been rescheduled to December of this year.



PARIS, FRANCE: August 14, 2007—Satnews Daily—The Meteor Research Group of the European Space Agency and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) performed coordinated observations of the Perseid meteor shower yesterday at various locations throughout Austria and Germany. The reason this is called the ‘Perseid’ meteor shower is, due to the relative orientation of the Earth and the comet Swift-Tuttle, the show seems to originate from the constellation Perseus. Whenever the comet travels close to the Sun, a stream of dust particles are ejected. These are then distributed along its orbit. When the particles enter the atmosphere, they interact and generate light before they disappear. The best visibility of the shower was between the 12th and 13th of August. A new camera called the Smart Panoramic Optical Sensor Head (SPOSH), developed by Jean-Optronics and DLR under ESA contract, captured the emitted light.



NASA: August 14, 2007—Satnews Daily—A hurray for the second spacewalk of the STS-118 mission to the ISS. Mission Specialists Dave Williams and Rick Mastracchio managed the successful installation of the new control moment gyroscope onto the Z1 truss during their spacewalk. This new gyroscope is one of four used to control the station’s attitude in orbit. The next spacewalk will occur on Wednesday to prepare the station’s Port 6 truss for relocation during future mission STS-120. The STS-118 mission has been extended by 3 days, thanks to the successful operation of the new Station-to-Shuttle Power Transfer System (SSPTS). Ground experts also continue to analyze Sunday’s imagery collection during the focused inspection of the Endeavour’s heat shield.



LOGAN, UTAH: August 14, 2007—Satnews Daily—This is the week of Utah State University’s annual Small Satellite Conference. Some of the top space experts, astronauts, Air Force officials and, yes, even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, will attend. The conference runs from Monday through Thursday and there’s a special session focused entirely on cube satellites. Student Steve Berkeley is hoping his team comprised of himself and six other students will be able to broadcast the original signal from Sputnik with their own 4-inch cube satellite. A cube satellite, obviously cube-shaped, can be held in the palm of your hand and is packed with microelectronics.



SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND: August 13, 2007—Satnews Daily—WORLDSPACE Satellite Radio’s Q2 ended on June 30, 2007, and they have now acquired 190,333 worldwide subscribers. That is a loss from the prior quarter’s close. According to the company, such reflects low net additions in India and a net loss of subscribers in the rest of the world. The company has halted subscription sales in Europe and others within the Northwest beam coverage of its AfriStar satellite as they prepare for the testing and launch of their service in Italy. Revenues of approximately $3.6 million are reported for Q2 2007, compared to $3.8 million for the same quarter last year. Subscription revenue was approximately $1.9 million for Q2 2007, identical to Q2 of 2006. However, on a sequential basis, subscription revenues in Q2 of 2007 were 4 percent higher than the $1.8 million recorded in Q1 of 2007. WORLDSPACE Satellite Radio has also announced the first OEM and aftermarket distribution agreement with Fiat Group Automobiles, where factory installation of the WorldSpace satellite radio as an option will be offered in Fiats starting in late 2009.



WASHINGTON, D.C.: August 14, 2007—Satnews Daily—Congress has to decide whether or not to implement a permanent or short-term extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act. Expiring November 1st, this is the target for a variety of tax battles now being fought on the legislatures’ turf. Both DirecTV and EchoStar Communications, with around 30 million combined subscribers, are doing their best to urge Congress to bar states from applying sales taxes to satellite-TV providers. They are not attempting to prevent such from happening to cable providers. They are attempting to ensure a permanent tax provision is inserted to ban taxation on the retail price of broadband access service. The 5 percent franchise tax fee paid by cable companies is not a tax, per se, but more like rent to occupy government-owned property, claim both EchoStar and DirecTV. Currently about six states apply sales taxes that the two satellite-TV providers claims is discriminatory… seems cable operators are exempt from those state taxes. Such attempts in the past by direct-broadcast satellite providers have not fared well… the success rate for at least two such attempts in federal courts is zero.