The FCC should deny Sateliot's petition for providing mobile satellite service in the 2 GHz band as it rejected a similar request from SpaceX, EchoStar told the agency's Space Bureau this week. EchoStar said Sateliot's proposed uplinks and downlinks in the band would interfere with its 5G broadband network. In addition, it said Sateliot's application makes "no practical sense," as Sateliot supposedly wants to use the 2 GHz band for narrowband IoT service for mobile network operators, but EchoStar, the only mobile network operator in the band, "does not want this service." In its April petition, Sateliot said its planned 10 smallsats and blanket-licensed terminals would minimally affect the band's other users. Sateliot said that while EchoStar's Dish Network is the sole licensee of the terrestrial AWS-4 service in the band, creation of that service and Dish's license were "never intended to transform the 2 GHz MSS band into primarily terrestrial spectrum."

Lockheed Martin contracted with Firefly Aerospace for as many as 25 launches through 2029, Lockheed said. The launch agreement covers a variety of future Lockheed spacecraft, Lockheed added.

Intelsat is pressing its case across the FCC's 10th floor for phasing in the Space Bureau's FY 2024 regulatory fees over five years. In a docket 24-85 filing Tuesday, Intelsat recapped meetings with the offices of Commissioners Anna Gomez and Nathan Simington at which it urged a phase-in "to avoid causing serious economic hardship to payors." Intelsat previously met with the offices of the other commissioners to make the same case.

The FAA signed off on the fourth test flight of SpaceX's Starship heavy rocket, with the company having met safety and other licensing requirements, the agency said Tuesday. Approval follows November's failed Starship test launch (see 2402270008). SpaceX said the launch could come as soon as Thursday.

The FCC should focus on the collective risk that satellite constellations pose instead of looking at the issue on a per-satellite basis, the Outer Space Institute said Monday in docket 18-313. It said the approaches of the European Space Agency or France "would be a considerable improvement" in regulatory clarity and system safety over the U.S. method. The FCC should treat operator claims that satellites will burn up entirely on re-entry skeptically. Instead, the FCC should require evidence of this. Pointing to vaporized metals entering the upper atmosphere by those satellite re-entries, the institute urged the FCC to study the issue "and be prepared to impose suitable mitigations." Any satellite operator exceeding the 100 object-years threshold -- the number of years each failed satellite remains in orbit, added across all the satellites -- should be barred from further deployments until the causes have been addressed, the institute said. It said operators should remove large debris coming from 100 object-years violations.

IoT constellation operator Sateliot will begin offering commercial service with four satellites scheduled for a July launch, it said last week. Sateliot said it secured $217 million in recurring revenue contracts from more than 400 clients in 50 countries.

As part of SES' proposed $3.1 billion purchase of Intelsat (see 2404300048), the two are asking the FCC Space Bureau to transfer all of Intelsat's FCC authorizations to SES. In a series of applications posted Friday, the two said the proposed deal would result in "a more dynamic multi-orbit satellite operator with the ability to offer innovative and enhanced services to commercial and U.S. Government customers," and greater competition as New SES "will be better positioned to vigorously compete" with legacy geostationary orbit operators and emerging low earth orbit players.

SpaceX's Falcon rockets are 80% reusable today, and the company hopes its Starship heavy rocket will reach 100% reusability, though that will take "extreme effort," CEO Elon Musk posted Thursday on X. He said the biggest reusability hurdle is the orbital return heat shield. The Space Shuttle's heat shield needed six months of refurbishment, "so was not reusable by any reasonable definition of the word," Musk said. "This will take a few kicks at the can to solve and requires building an entirely new supply chain for low-cost, high-volume and yet high-reliability heat shield tiles, but it can be done." SpaceX said this week the next Starship test launch could come June 5.

The FCC is proposing that it cap the probability that a satellite applicant suffers a debris-generating accidental explosion at less than 1 in 1,000 per satellite. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Wednesday that an orbital debris probability draft order had been circulated among the regular commissioners. "We can no longer afford to launch new satellites into our skies without being thoughtful about space sustainability," she said. The FCC said the 0.001 probability metric lines up with the federal government's orbital debris mitigation standard practices. It said the requirement would be phased in a year after Federal Register publication. The agency also is considering adoption of a 100 object-years metric -- the number of years each failed satellite remains in orbit, added across all the satellites -- for assessing the risk of derelict satellites in orbit from a constellation (see 2405240005).

Intuitive Machines hopes it can send its second lunar lander to the moon's surface sometime in Q4. In an FCC Space Bureau application posted Tuesday, it sought approval for that NOVA-C Lunar Lander mission. It would land at the moon's South Pole and carry out a variety of missions, including testing an LTE communications system on the moon. The company's first lunar lander mission, part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, was carried out in February.