OW22: A Celestial Recap

This week in satellite communications was like watching a high-stakes chess match played by caffeinated physicists using live ferrets as pieces. Somewhere between the orbital arms race, spectrum land grabs, and yet another company promising to “revolutionize” antennas, it became clear: space is no longer the final frontier, it’s the new frontier for corporate melodrama and barely disguised military cosplay.

The United States, never one to skip a sequel, announced its latest attempt to militarize the heavens with something called the “Golden Dome.” Which sounds less like a defense system and more like a knock-off fragrance for ageing politicians. It’s a reboot of the old Star Wars missile shield, except this time the PowerPoint slides are in 4K and the threat assessments are crowd-sourced from Twitter. The idea is to build a triple-decker sandwich of orbital hardware across LEO, MEO, and GEO to intercept threats and, incidentally, anyone trying to upload cat videos during wartime. Dual-use applications, they say, which is code for: “we’ll spy on you, and if we feel moody, maybe zap something too.”

Meanwhile, Starlink, bless its constantly-expanding ambition, decided Ku and Ka bands weren’t quite twitchy enough and is now eyeing E-band. Ofcom, ever the polite British regulator, opened a public consultation on SpaceX ’s request to test this spectrum in the UK. E-band, of course, is that magical frequency where you can transmit data faster than regret, assuming it’s not raining, misty, humid, or existing on Earth. It’s high-reward and catastrophically sensitive, but SpaceX doesn’t seem to mind. Possibly because they’ve realized their current infrastructure is straining like a dinner jacket at a Vegas buffet. Legacy operators are watching this unfold like pensioners at a youth rave, horrified, confused, and quietly aware they’ll be ignored.

And then there’s maritime connectivity, once the jewel in GEO’s crown. A new Nova Space Inc. report confirms the unthinkable: by 2034, LEO networks will own 97% of the market. GEO operators, once kings of the cruise ship, are now being shoved off the plank by Elon’s pizza boxes. The latency gap is terminal, the antennas are evolving faster than the customers, and nobody wants to pay for laggy email in the middle of the ocean anymore. The cash cow has capsized, and all the lifeboats are branded with the Starlink logo.

Back on land, or rather, back in bureaucracy, the Federal Communications Commission had a moment of inspiration or insanity and proposed opening the 12.7 and 42 GHz bands for satellite use. On paper, it’s progress. In reality, it’s a bar brawl in a broom closet. Telcos want it for 6G. LEO operators want it for backhaul. Fixed wireless providers want it for… something. Everyone’s smiling through clenched teeth, muttering phrases like “coexistence” and “shared spectrum,” while quietly filing lawsuits in advance. Regulatory clarity? Please. It’s more like regulatory roulette with live rounds and a legal team on retainer.

Elsewhere, in the surprisingly competent corner of the industry, Sateliot made a case for its seamless 5G-IoT satellite failover service. The premise is beautifully simple: when your cell tower gets wiped out by a hurricane, an earthquake, or just general human stupidity, a satellite jumps in and saves the day. The clever bit? It’s based on 3GPP NB-IoT, which means it works with gear people already have, no proprietary dongles, no gold-plated modems, just function over flash. It’s rare. It’s practical. Which probably means it’ll be ignored until someone else rebrands it with AI and sells it at three times the price.

Meanwhile, Intelsat continues its side hustle as the FCC’s most prolific STA applicant. A fresh round of temporary authorizations dropped this week, and at this point, their paperwork volume could qualify as a novella. It’s either regulatory agility or the bureaucratic equivalent of supergluing a broken wing back on a Boeing and hoping nobody notices. Everything’s “temporary,” but nothing’s actually planned. It’s all reaction, no roadmap. Like a GPS set to “vague optimism.”

In the defense sector, Orbit Communication Systems rolled out new Ka-band terminals at the Sea-Air-Space conference. Small, rugged, and more resilient than most NATO alliances, they’re built to survive environments where GPS stops working and someone’s always jamming your signal just to be annoying. Orbit wisely skipped the “more bandwidth” arms race and leaned into the pitch of actually working under fire, which in military speak is as close to innovation as anyone dares go without risking a procurement scandal.

Of course, while all this is happening, the astronomers are quietly losing their minds. Another Payload article confirmed what most dark-sky advocates already know: LEO constellations are turning ground-based astronomy into a strobe-lit disco of despair. Sure, SpaceX added some makeup to their satellites and promised to play nice, but at this point, asking satellite companies to regulate themselves is like asking toddlers to supervise a fireworks show. Astronomers are losing visibility, climate scientists are losing data, and nobody seems to care because streaming TikTok from a canoe in Norway apparently matters more than detecting near-Earth asteroids.

And just when you think it couldn’t get weirder, SES Satellites decides to outsource its orbital mobility to Impulse Space . Instead of booking a proper ride to GEO, they’re now launching satellites into LEO and hitching lifts like students backpacking through Europe. It’s Uber for payloads, minus the complaints about the driver’s music. It’s actually smart, decouple the launch from the orbit, spend less, get more control, and maybe avoid being locked into a one-size-fits-all rocket that costs more than a small nation’s GDP.

So where does that leave us? In orbit, spinning wildly, throwing spectrum filings at each other and hoping someone, somewhere, has a plan that doesn’t involve duct tape and wishful thinking. GEO operators are acting like anxious startups, LEO mega-constellations are both saviors and villains, and the regulators? They’re pretending to referee a knife fight while blindfolded and holding a thesaurus.

And next week? Lasers. Probably actual ones. Possibly for communication. More likely pointed at something someone shouldn’t have launched in the first place.

Stay tuned. Or don’t. We’ll beam it to you anyway.