Today, when everything is digital, it seems truly remarkable how long we have been commercializing space in analog mode. Sure, the Space Race and defense spending in the 1960s gave birth to microelectronics. But who could forget – if you’re of the right age – the US$1 million that one company spent to create a pen that could write in microgravity? The company’s founder, Paul Fisher, offered the Space Pen to NASA, and it made its first spaceflight in 1967. (Meanwhile, Russian cosmonauts just used a pencil.)

It was in the 1980s that the digital world we know today began to take shape, with the introduction of the personal computer. But the GEO satcom business, operating in its safe-seeming silo, continued to operate on 15-year replacement cycles that set the pace for the entire industry. Digital encoding gradually took over connectivity, but the fundamental architecture of the global satcom network remained resolutely analog.

Today, the Space Pen’s writing is on the wall. Satcom and earth observation now take place in a digital ecosystem from orbit to Earth – still incomplete in places but advancing at the kind of speed that digital innovation provides.

In this issue:

• Escaping the Silo – By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Software, Interoperability and Facing Disruption – By Stuart Daughtridge, VP of Advanced Technology at Kratos and Chair and Director of DIFI
• New from BSW: Byte-Sized Space
• Meet the Future Leaders of the Industry
• The Golden Crown, the Chicago White Sox & the Collapse of Starlink – By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
• Plus More!

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“Engage” is a powerful word. It is something that SSPI tries to help the people of our industry do every day. And believe me, we all need that help.

Engagement is essential if we are to continue making this a great industry to work, create and innovate in. In the pages of this Orbiter, we share all the ways that SSPI can help you raise your eyes from the screen and do it: bringing your company into membership, mentoring and being mentored, joining chapters or working groups like SSPI-WISE, nominating for awards, attending events and business roundtables, and contributing to the wide range of podcast, video and online content that we produce to sell the world on the immense value of space and satellite.

They take time. They take a bit of money to support SSPI’s existence. But the return on investment? It’s galactic!

In this issue:

• Engage! – By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• How Are You Contributing to a Safe and Sustainable Future in Space?
• Join Women Helping Women Thrive in the Space and Satellite Industry – By Tina Ghataore and Debra Facktor
• Small Steps, Big Impact – By Tamara Bond-Williams, Director of Engagement
• Why Did the Elf Cross the Road? – By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
• Plus More!

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In the satellite industry, it can sometimes feel like LEO gets all the attention. Nevertheless, stalwart GEO is having a moment. Long-awaited, massive spacecraft are venturing into GEO to test whether it can be a competitive yet cost-effective platform for delivering broadband. Swarms of smallsats are being designed for GEO operation, where their lower costs and quicker replacement rates promise newfound adaptability in the original orbit of our industry. The major GEO fleets are placing their bets on a GEO-MEO-LEO architecture to deliver the highest value in space communications.

In this issue of The Orbiter, we shine a spotlight on the first orbit to be entirely commercialized – the eternal orbit that continues to provide invaluable contributions to life on Earth. We gather up all the audio, video, social media, and written content of our five-week Eternal Orbit campaign for your easy access, and we’ve added some interesting new content as well. We express our gratitude to Hughes for initiating and supporting this campaign.

In this issue:

• GEO Reborn – By Tamara Bond-Williams, Director of Engagement
• Why SSPI is Sending its Members to the Moon – By Katherine Gizinski, CEO of River Advisers and SSPI Chair
• GEO 2.0 and the Outernet
• Why Do We Need You? – By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Swiss Army Knives in GEO Orbit – By John Gedmark, Co-Founder and CEO of Astranis
• Plus more!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: Reducing the Risks of Space!

In this issue of The Orbiter, we turn our attention to the many risks of space to human beings and the machines we launch there, and how we work to reduce them. We gather up all the audio, video, social media and written content of our six-week Reducing the Risks of Space campaign for your easy access. We thank the Space Shuttle Children’s Trust Fund for originating the idea and supporting the campaign, along with Momentus Space.

The risks of space will always be with us. The good news about the risks we create ourselves is the same ingenuity that went into making the mess can be harnessed to make it better. It’s time to get in the game.

In this issue:

• Danger Over the Horizon – By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Take the Space Debris Pledge – By Dan Oltregge, Founder and Administrator of the Space Safety Coalition
• Is Entropy Our Fate for the Space Economy? – By Charity Weedon, Vice President of Global Space Policy and Government Relations at Astroscale US
• Keeping the Road to Space Open for Future Generations
• Which Way Forward for Human Spaceflight Safety? – By Courtney Stadd, Executive Vice President of the Beyond Earth Institute
• “There’s More to the Universe than What’s for Lunch” – By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new edition of The Orbiter: Bridging the Broadband Gap!

SSPI’s current topic campaign, Bridging the Broadband Gap, is all about the impacts of the gaping holes in global IP connectivity, and what companies are doing to fill them, whether for villages in Africa, humanitarian relief camps or warfighters at the front. But when we talk about the broadband gap, we’re really talking about something else. A money gap.

Affordability is critical. For a long time, cell service in India was only for the rich. But when the price of a phone dropped to equal the average monthly wage in the country, adoption exploded.

The space and satellite industry is doing its bit to spread broadband access and make it more affordable – despite the fact that we have never been known as a low-cost provider. LEO constellations aim to build a subscriber base in the tens or hundreds of millions, which could make their connectivity and custom terminals cheap enough for a truly mass global market. We are seeing it happen now, month by month, launch by launch.

This issue of The Orbiter is sponsored by

In this issue:

• The Broadband Gap is a Money Gap – By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Women and the Digital Divide
• Peru School System and HughesNet Connect Students to Educational Resources
• The World’s First Broadband was over Satellite – By Dr. Joseph N. Pelton, Founder and Chair of the Board, Alliance for Collaboration in Exploration of Space (ACES)
• #DarkAgesSucked – By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new edition of The Orbiter: Opening the Final Frontier!

Our future in space is the topic of our latest multi-week, multi-platform campaign, Opening the Final Frontier. With the support of Virgin Orbit, we have shared the views and experience of NSR, the Department of Homeland Security, SpaceRyde, Hogan Lovells, Momentus, the Mexican Space Agency, the Global Spaceport Alliance and the Greater Houston Partnership, among others.

In this issue of The Orbiter, we gather all the audio, video and written content of our campaign in one convenient place and add new points of view. It’s a story of human endeavor we’re excited to share. For the first time since 1969, when Neil Armstrong said his famous words from the Sea of Tranquility, humankind is again poised to make a giant leap. It doesn’t really matter who brings the biggest or most powerful rocket to the job. All that matters is how far it will finally take us.

This issue of The Orbiter is sponsored by

In this issue:

• How Big is Your Rocket? – By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• A Conversation with Former Senior DOD Leaders on Responsive Space
• Space Infrastructure: The Foundation of the Future
• Tackling the Industry’s Biggest Challenge – By Elisabeth Tweedie, Founder, Definitive Direction
• Revolutionary Advances to Cope with Space Debris – By Dr. Joseph N. Pelton, Founder and Acting Chair of the Board, Alliance for Collaboration in Exploration of Space (ACES)
• Stopping the Leaks . . . – By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new edition of The Orbiter: Satellites Untangling the Supply Chain!

Remember how glad we all were to say goodbye to 2020 after 10 months spent in an accelerating global health crisis? Surely 2021 had to be better.

And then, 12 months later, we were so glad to say goodbye to 2021. Adding to a pandemic that refused to quit were growing snarls in the world’s supply chains for physical goods, with containers and ships in all the wrong places, continued lockdowns and shortages of components rippling through global production processes. Surely 2022 had to be better.

You know the rest. Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, in addition to its sheer barbarity, has further scrambled world trade and given inflation a major boost. Satellites that once flew on Ukraine’s massive Antonov cargo plane are now making their slow way by boat and truck to launch sites – just one example of supply chains stretched to the breaking point.

Economic travail has at least given SSPI the chance to showcase a largely invisible but indispensable component of global trade. That’s our industry: the space communication networks and eyes in the sky that grease the wheels of global trade every day. For the past six weeks, SSPI has been focusing its podcasts, videos and online events on Untangling the Supply Chain.

This issue of The Orbiter is sponsored by

In this issue:

• Tangled in Our Own Chains – By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Staffing the Satellite Assembly Line
• Solving Supply Chain Troubles
• Navigating Global Upheaval
• Pessimism and Space Lasers – By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: Climate Sensing!

American author and humorist Mark Twain once observed how many conversations begin with a mention of the weather. And that peeved him. Everybody talks about the weather, he complained, but nobody does anything about it.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the days of talking about the weather and not doing anything about it are waning fast. I’m referring, of course, to the climate change emergency. As we move from the dire early warnings of scientists to the lived experience of disturbing and destructive weather, even those who would really, really, really like to ignore and dismiss it are finding doubt creeping in.

So, it is a good time to ask again what we can do about it. For the past seven weeks, SSPI has been asking that question in our Climate Sense campaign. Our followers have heard from NASA and the Environmental Defense Fund. They have assessed agricultural risks with a precision-agriculture entrepreneur and a venture investor. And they have heard the unique perspective on the Earth that astronaut Nicole Stott gained in her service aboard ISS. In videos and podcasts and live online conversations, we have explored the essential contributions of satellite to understanding and taking action.

In this issue:

• Making Sense of the Climate Emergency - By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – and Our Mission to Protect It - By Nicole Stott
• Protecting the World’s Forests from Greater Threats
• Ensuring the Food and Water Supply for Us All
• Why the Weathermen Lied and the Penguins Moved South - By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: Getting Engaged in Space!

The founders of SSPI saw that the industry was destined to grow far beyond its narrow bounds. They saw the need for an international organization that existed principally for the people of the industry – to connect them for peer learning and support, to provide a broader perspective than their current job could provide, and through that to make them more valuable to themselves and their employers.

Thirty-eight years later, Space & Satellite Professionals International is still at it. This issue of The Orbiter is dedicated to that singular mission of engagement across the boundaries of discipline, job category, company and nation. It is about all the ways that the people of space and satellite engage through the industry’s biggest membership association.

In this issue:

• Getting Engaged in Space - By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• It Began with a Dream - By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Development and Innovation
• Where Passion and Promise Meet - By Tamara Bond-Williams, Membership Director
• Is Mentoring a Service to Others – or to Yourself? - By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: They Changed the World!

“Changing the world” is a big claim to make. Alexander conquered some of it. Without Marie Curie’s pioneering research into radioactivity, we would not have discovered the atom, which has changed a thing or two in the world. Joseph Lister and Jonas Salk drove deadly diseases affecting billions into near extinction.  

When SSPI inducts people into the industry’s Hall of Fame, we say it is for achievements that transform life on Earth for the better through space and satellite technologies. The shoes, as the old saying goes, are big to fill.

In this issue:

• They Changed the World - By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Leadership in Turbulent Times
• Celebrating Lifetimes of Achievement
• A Way You’ll Never Be - By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Development and Innovation
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: How I Got Started in This Crazy Business!

At SSPI, we interview many established and emerging leaders for our Making Leaders campaign. The topics vary, but one question always comes up: “What got you started in this business?”

And every time, the question we really want to ask is this: “How did you get started in this crazy business?” Because everything we do in space and satellite is as close to impossible as it can be while still lifting off the ground, circling the Earth or heading for the stars. And the pathways we take into careers can be every bit as surprising.

In this issue:

• How I Got Started in This Crazy Business - By Robert Bell, Executive Director
• Raising a Glass to the 20 Under 35 of 2020
• Cheering on the 2020 Mentor of the Year
• SSPI Chapters Celebrate World Space Week
• The Risk of Having Pizza in Virginia - By Lou Zacharilla, Director of Development and Innovation
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: Satellites and Public Health!

While we do not have a satellite that can produce a vaccine or lift the declining social index for those of us who thrive on personal relationships and physical proximity, our industry is playing a major role in keeping civil society and swaths of the economy intact. As satellites were instrumental in helping to eradicate Polio in nations like India, they are now enabling telemedicine services to help others around the world stay well, become diagnosed properly and heal. Nearly 80% of people seeing doctors during this crisis are seeing them online. Online medicine is helping those who tragically experience the dark impact of isolation, loneliness and depression.

If our industry was indispensable before the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be fundamental to the new abnormal we will have after this disease. If, as the echo chamber maintains, we are digitizing the economy more rapidly as a result of the spread of this virus, then satellite will become even more indispensable.

In this issue, you’ll read stories from your colleagues throughout the industry about how satellite companies’s products and services are being used to protect and strengthen public health around the world!

In this issue:

• You Have to Go Through to Get To - By Tamara Bond-Williams, Membership Director, SSPI
• Saving a Life from Orbit - By Tory Bruno, President & CEO, United Launch Alliance
• Addressing a Global Pandemic with Geospatial Data - By Dr. Walter Scott, EVP & CTO and Rhiannan Price, Director of Sustainable Development Practice, Maxar Technologies
• Satellite Enabling a Human Healing Touch amid the COVID-19 Pandemic - By Jeremy Turpin, Co-Founder and CTO, Isotropic Systems
• When Lives Depend on Lines of Communication, Satellite Delivers - By Paul Gaske, EVP and General Manager for North America, Hughes Network Systems
• New Solutions to Communications Gaps in Times of Crisis - By Cate Van Oppen, Product Manager, Kymeta Corporation
• The New Abnormal - By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Development and Innovation, SSPI
• Plus More!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: People - The Engine of Space and Satellite!

Leadership is of utmost importance to our industry – because investment and technology may be the fuel for its remarkable advance, but people are the engine. We have set ourselves some truly daunting goals, from filling the sky with satellites to turning earth observation into the biggest Big Data asset of all time and creating the first space economy in history. We will only achieve them by attracting, developing and retaining people who can learn to lead, whether it is a small test and measurement team or an entire company pioneering technologies that were science fiction twenty years ago.

Valuable lessons on leadership are available from the many interviews we have conducted with members of the Space & Satellite Hall of Fame and our 20 Under 35 cohorts of future leaders. Leadership is a complicated subject, but they do a remarkable job of capturing the essentials in a few words.

In this issue:

• Satellites are Easy – People are Hard
• Looking Back to Look Forward
• Celebrating Lifetimes of Achievement: The 2020 Hall of Fame Inductees
• London’s Bridge of Generations
• Plus more!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: The Future is Looking Up!

After a never-before-seen wave of private investment in space, investors are waiting to see which of their bets will pan out. What will the space and satellite industry look like in 2029?

In this issue of The Orbiter, we ask some smart people—including Iridium CEO Matt Desch, ManSat CEO Chris Stott and NSR Senior Analyst Gagan Agrawal—what the space and satellite business will be doing ten years from now.

In this issue:

• Will the Future Finally Arrive this Time?
• The Proliferation of Satellite IoT: It’s Only Just Beginning
• How Will People Watch Netflix on the Moon?
• Youth Not Wasted
• Plus more!

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SSPI has released a new issue of The Orbiter: The Big View!

When the crew of Apollo 8 ventured beyond low Earth orbit into cislunar space in 1968, they brought us back the first full portrait of our home planet, blazing blue and white against the black backdrop of infinite space. Today, as we enter the Age of Commercial Space, the value of that view of Earth is rapidly rising through the billions to the trillions of dollars. 

In this issue of The Orbiter, we celebrate the enormous contribution that Earth observation (EO) and its data make to life on the ground.

In this issue:

• The Evolution of Earth Observation
• SSPI is Looking for the Next “20 Under 35” Young Professionals to Watch in the Coming Years!
• The “Underview Effect”
• Navigating a New Era of Connectivity
• Plus more!

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