- School Days, New Phase, UofColo Wins Sat Instrument Contract
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as NASA have gone all out with the University of Colorado. The higher educational institution’s Atmospheric and Space Physics has been awarded a $92 million contract. The goal will be to build satellite instruments to help forecast solar disturbances. The contract calls for four instruments in total, with the first one scheduled for delivery in 2012 and deployment in 2014. - Sea Launch Needed Gas Deflector, And That’s What They Finally Have
Phew, 280-metric tons… that’s the weight of the newly manufactured gas deflector for Sea Launch’s Odyssey Launch Platform. The deflector arrived at Home Port in Long Beach, California on August 20th. This new structure is going to be installed at the stern of the Odyssey, just beneath the launch pad itself. A Strand Jack hydraulic lift and pneumatic chain hoists will be used to align the structure into position. The original, one-of-a-kind gas deflector was destroyed during the failed January 30th launch attempt. This device deflects engine exhaust away from the platform and also controls the acoustic environment. The replacement structure was built at the Baltisky shipyard in St. Petersburg, Russia, which is where the original one had been built a decade ago—Long Beach, California—August 28, 2007 - TMF Associates Examines MSS Ops
There’s a new profile of all of the main MSS operators from TMF Associates. One reason for this study is due to the lack of available information on some of the private companies involved in this arena, such as Iridium and Thuraya, to name two. The company released a detailed look at Iridium in July of this year, which included projects for the number of subscribers and revenue through the year 2011. A similarly constructed report will see the light of day profiling Thuraya this September. In the meantime, you may wish to read TMF’s “Handheld MSS: a rapidly growing market?” located at https://www.tmfassociates.com/articles – an interesting read!—Menlo Park, California—August 28, 2007 - Housing Debacle Is Not Pleasant News For Satellite And Cable Giants, Either
Craig Moffett is the cable and satellite analyst for Sanford Bernstein. Due to the U.S. housing market difficulties, he is forecasting a retreat in subscriber growth and net losses this year and beyond for companies such as Comcast (CMCSA), Cablevision (CVC), DirecTV (DTV) and Time Warner Cable (TWC). In a published report in Silicon Alley Insider (Beta), Moffett believes satellite growth will slow from 1.9 million net ads last year to 1.4 million this year and then drop below the 1 million mark to around 890,000 for next year. He also stated these companies are resistant to macro-economic shocks and shouldn’t suffer much, financially-speaking. He did add that when analog TV departs in February of 2009, to make room for the wireless service winners from the FCC spectrum auction next year, around 20 million homes will have to obtain digital TV service. “For many of those households, the most expedient answer will almost certainly be a call to the local cable operator, or to DirecTV or Echostar,” he said—New York, New York—August 28, 2007
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