The Orbiter - What Has SSPI Done for You Lately?

The Orbiter What Has SSPI Done for You Lately?

CONTENTS 3

What Has SSPI Done for You Lately?

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Empires of the Mind

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Highlights from the Future Leaders Dinner and Better Satellite World Awards Dinner

What Have SSPI’s Chapters Done Lately?

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Purdue University Team Wins Research Competition for Second Year in a Row, Tying with the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez

A Year of Promise: The 2017 Promise Award Nominees

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Making a Better World: The 2017 Better Satellite World Award Winners

Thales Alenia Space and others spur LEO craze with new Space Rider vehicle

How the SSPI Hall of Fame and New Space Exhibit Ended up at the National Electronics Museum

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Turning Promise into Purpose-Filled Careers

Upcoming Events SSPI MID-ATLANTIC

Annual Winter Fundraising Event, January 18, Reston, VA, USA SSPI ROCKY MOUNTAIN

SSPI Curling Event, February 2, Golden, CO, USA NETWORKING IN WASHINGTON

SSPI Hall of Fame Reception at the National Air & Space Museum, March 13 Learn more about upcoming events at www.SSPI.org

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What Has SSPI Done for You Lately?

We kicked off the Better Satellite World campaign two and a half years ago with a video called “What Has a Satellite Done for You Lately?” It is still one of the most popular in our BSW series, which now runs to 19 videos and text stories.

“What have you done for me?” is always a good question and, here at year’s end, I thought it was worth answering. What has SSPI done for you this year, whether you are a sponsor, a member or a volunteer who donates time to a chapter or a program? The contributions of cash, care and knowledge all have value, and we are grateful for every single one.

We published 8 new Better Satellite World stories and videos on everything from the battle against polio to securing the border and making your next airline flight a lot better.

Promotion of those videos delivered 1.4 million impressions with an advertising value of $146,000 – value to the sponsors who supported the campaign or funded production of a video about their technology and services, not to mention the industry as a whole. We also honored three organizations for making a better world using space and satellite technology at our BSW Awards Dinner in London, again with the support of our sponsors.

We recognized talent across the industry with our Promise Awards and Hall of Fame.

Recognition like this boosts morale and business performance, and inspires the rest of us to greater innovation. Congratulations again to Dr. Walter Scott of DigitalGlobe, Ryan Carlisle of SpaceX, Mary Cotton of iDirect, Joyeeta Chatterjee of Reed Smith, Jay Monroe of Globalstar, Jamal Madni of Boeing and Thomas Choi of ABS Global – and thanks to the many sponsors who made this recognition possible.

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What Has SSPI Done for You Lately?

We drove improvements in how the industry attracts and engages the talent that powers innovation. The first in our new series of Making Leaders reports – Bringing New Hires on Board: From Promise to Purpose – offers advice from experts on introducing new hires to your company in ways that make them want to commit to its future. A new webinar series on talent management practices delivered more expert advice from executives of Space Systems Loral, Virgin Orbit, DataPath, Kymeta, Intelsat, Boeing, Korn Ferry and ICP Search – and exposure for sponsors to tens of thousands of satellite professionals.

We expanded our annual research competitions for undergraduate and graduate students from the US to include Canada and the UK. Each year, we offer thousands of students the chance to compete for cash prizes in a competition that leads to gain a practical understanding of space & satellite – something they do not get from their instructors. Through partnerships with student-led organizations, we created opportunities for sponsors to speak, to network and to fil their university recruiting pipelines at student space conferences attracting space enthusiasts from hundreds of universities. We also planned the launch of communication programs that will share sponsor profiles, industry news and BSW videos with tens of thousands of students across multiple countries. Sponsors will gain the opportunity to educate students on the career prospects they offer – and be honored in front of our membership for doing so.

There is much more, from awarding scholarships in partnership with our chapters, helping chapters energize and grow, and connecting sponsors to potential customers. It takes just a few minutes to catch up with our major campaigns and their results at www.sspi.org.

I wish you a joyous holiday season and great success in 2018.

Robert Bell Executive Director

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Making a Better World The 2017 Better Satellite World Award Winners The Better Satellite World Awards honor established companies and disruptive innovators for continuing to make our world a more prosperous, healthier, bettereducated, more sustainable and inclusive home for all humankind. This year’s winners were recently honored at the 2017 Better Satellite World Awards Dinner, presented by the UK and Isle of Man Chapters, on December 4 in London. The awards were presented in three categories: Economy, Knowledge, and Humanity.

Get to know the winners here:

The DStv Eutelsat Star Awards

The DStv Eutelsat Star Awards were initiated in 2010 by Eutelsat in partnership with its long-term African video client MultiChoice.

The program is a pan-African competition designed to expose young people throughout the continent to satellite technology and its potential for advancement in Africa. During the contest, students aged 14 to 19 are encouraged to analyze the practical applications of the scientific principles they learn in school with the intention of envisioning new ways satellite technology can serve their continent’s specific needs. Each year’s competition focuses around a new topic with students submitting essays and posters describing their ideas. The winners receive a free trip to Paris to visit Eutelsat and travel on to French Guiana to visit the European spaceport and see a satellite go into space. Eutelsat and MultiChoice maintain strong ties with the winners, encouraging them to become advocates and ambassadors for satellite technology locally and across the continent. As of 2017, the DStv Eutelsat Star Awards have received over 5,000 entries from across the continent and awarded winners from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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Making a Better World The 2017 Better Satellite World Award Winners

MEOLUT Next

A joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), Thales Alenia Space is combining 40 years of experience and a unique diversity of expertise, talents and cultures, Thales Alenia Space architects design and deliver high technology solutions for telecommunications, navigation, Earth observation, environmental management, exploration, science and orbital infrastructures. Governments, institutions and companies rely on Thales Alenia Space to design, operate and deliver satellite-based systems that help them position and connect anyone or anything everywhere, to help observe our planet and help optimize the use of our planet’s – and our solar system’s – resources.

Thales Alenia Space believes in space as humankind’s new horizon, which will enable us to build a better, more sustainable life on Earth.

MEOLUT Next is Thales Alenia Space’s newest contribution to satellite search and rescue efforts to save more lives. It is a 2-meter compact phased array antenna that may be deployed on a rooftop without the need for additional heavy infrastructure. The MEOLUT Next is stationary and requires no electric motors to run, allowing it to operate with minimal maintenance. It is capable of tracking signals from all MEO satellites within view of it, allowing it to detect distress signals from up to 5,000 km away. The MEOLUT Next is part of the Cospas/ Sarsat free global search and rescue service, transmitting detected distress signals immediately to those who can help. MEOLUT Next first model was certified by Cospas-Sarsat in 2016, the first to be certified world-wide, and has been operated by the French government since. In July of 2017, a MEOLUT Next antenna picked up the distress beacon of a small sailing boat off the coast of Sardinia, well outside of VHF radio and other communication ranges. Within 5 minutes, the MEOLUT Next’s signal bursts had pinpointed the boat’s location well enough for rescue crews to save its three passengers within hours.

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Making a Better World The 2017 Better Satellite World Award Winners

Teledyne e2v

Teledyne e2v is a global manufacturer, headquartered in England, that designs, develops and manufactures space-qualified imagers and arrays, semiconductors, and other products. The company has designed and built cameras for the European Space Agency’s Rosetta comet mission, the Peruvian government’s PerúSAT-1 and NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter. Located across Europe, Asia and the Americas, Teledyne e2v has been involved in many technological and innovation breakthroughs and has forged many successful industry partnerships. In addition to space-based applications, Teledyne e2v provides imaging sensors and custom camera solutions for the machine vision market as well as healthcare, industrial and defense uses.

The company’s e2v sensors are also critical components in NASA satellites such as OMPs (Ozone monitoring platforms) and satellites made in China, Japan and many other countries.

Teledyne e2v’s visual image sensors have played a key role in helping us learn more about the long-term health of our planet, embedded as part of many Earth observation satellites, including those of the Sentinel and Earth Explorer programs.

The sensors deliver highly detailed images for resource, disaster and ocean monitoring, and land mapping. This data can then be used to inform government and private industry environmental policy to help protect Earth’s future. Teledyne e2v’s sensors will also play a vital role in the European Space Agency’s upcoming FLEX satellite mission that will map vegetation and improve our understanding of how carbon moves between plants and the atmosphere. New Teledyne e2v sensors on Sentinels 4 and 5 will monitor air quality and the ozone layer and new meteorological satellites such as MTG, which will provide improved data on weather patterns.

Click here to learn more about the Better Satellite World Awards program

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Empires of the Mind

By Lou Zacharilla, Director of Development What a bounce and a pulse the city of London has in late 2017!

Between its incredible growth and diversity (construction cranes sprout everywhere here, like the antenna of prosperity that construction cranes always signal) and the dizzying, stupefying political theatre of Brexit, the city has replaced New York as the center of the world for real theatre and goes toe-to-toe with Washington for the political kind. (It is Theatre of the Absurd to many, but hey….)

Fortunately, SSPI is not here to bathe in the confusing political soup of our time. We came here to celebrate the many ways that satellites and industry professionals like you make the world better. With the announcement of our name change, we also are here to let people know that we will enable and often lead the industry and our species into space. It is a good time to be a professional in the satellite community. New industry leaders like Blue Origin’s founder Jeff Bezos are insistent that space exploration will also make the planet we inhabit better in ways not yet imagined. This was a recurring theme here and one of the rationales being used to seek funding for space-related programs.

While the how and when may not yet be clear—at least beyond the notion that cheaper materials, new jobs and new technologies will appear as the inevitable results from the investments and ambitions that are being made—what is really clear is how the satellite industry is making a better world down here right now.

That one we have covered! In fact, we presented six examples on Monday night (4 December) inside of One Whitehall Place’s splendid Victorian venue, with its high ceilings, free standing grand marble stairs and glittering chandeliers. You know you are in the heart of the Empire when, at the top of the stairs leading to the ceremony, you stare eye-to-eye with a full-length portrait of a youthful Winston Churchill. The same Churchill who later in his life, in 1943 and amidst the dark, uncertain struggle of World War II, presciently remarked that, “The next empires will be empires of the mind.” And it has come to pass, as knowledge has become the essential characteristic of the economy and the creation and transferring of data has become essentially the commodity and content of value. Satellites are in the midst of this dizzying new network of services. This is why groups like Innovate UK are a part 8

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Empires of the Mind

of the SSPI UK Chapter’s mission. Our industry is leading an economy that has established empires of the mind but also a kingdom with a heart.

The heart is what we elevated, thanks to recipients from Thales Alenia Space, Teledyne e2v and Eutelsat. The memory of the evening and the reasons they were named can be found on our website. What lingers and perpetuates through social media and the follow-up from the intense networking is the degree to which our industry has begun to recognize its immense contributions.

Many thanks to Milbank for again being our Host and lead sponsor, followed by the generous support from Globecomm and Arianespace.

Thanks as well to our Isle of Man Chapter, which has been active in this event since the first hour. We began our evening at the Reform Club, where our first Better Satellite World Awards dinner had taken place three years ago thanks to one of the club’s members, SSPI’s Chairman Emeritus and CEO of ManSat on the Isle of Man, Chris Stott. We were able to network with people whose influence on the British and global space industry is substantial.

The UK has committed itself to developing a larger slice of the global space market, and SSPI’s presence in London, and through our fledgling UK Chapter, is one small embrace of that effort.

Later in the evening, the Honorable Nigel Evans, the member of Parliament from Ribble Valley and president of the APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) for space, which establishes awareness of the importance of space-based capabilities to the UK economy and promotes investments in it, joined the dinner. We appreciate that Mr. Evans was generous with his time. He literally came to our event after doing his exit (sorry, bad choice of words) from the Parliament after a vote on Brexit which was contentious, to say the least. He left the rigors of the European Union separation question to be with SSPI and the recipients of our Awards. Not as an escape, it was noted, but as a plan for the UK’s path forward.

The advent of the Christmas holiday gave the evening an even richer December feeling and the acceptance remarks—Vanessa O’Connor of Eutelsat’s in particular— showed how we, as an industry, give and keep giving for the greater good. We have a path forward. It is called inspiring humanity.

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Empires of the Mind

Even though I was onstage much of the evening, I was seated next to the UK Chapter’s Personality of the Year, Mrs. Magali Vaissiere. I expected the head of ESA’s Telecommunications and Integrated Applications group, who began her career on ground-based systems and satellites, to be a dry, engineering type. She was anything but this. Despite an immense portfolio, she was engaging, thoughtful and a remarkably humble woman. This is so especially when you consider the magnitude of her work, which is to explore public/private partnerships for ESA in an attempt to establish new commercial “communities” (one of my favorite words because it means growth through collaboration and common virtues.) In Europe as elsewhere, economic malaise or downright collapse of the middle class in many developed nations is a political issue of the highest concern and once again our industry will have a chance to make a “better satellite world” through its ability to innovate, create new micro industries and keep producing new technologies and companies like one of the event’s first-time sponsors, Phasor.

Hoteiosho is one of Buddhism’s seven gods of fortune. Each year around Christmas in Japan you will see him represented as a monk, with a large belly and a sack filled with toys and goodies. What is unique about this deity is that he has eyes in the back of his head, which allows him to see behind himself without others knowing it. I had the luxury of seeing the audience from the stage of One Whitehall Place all night and being close enough to sense the passion in the people accepting our award. I can tell you that the enthusiasm for our recipients—including our two Honorable Mentions, SatSure and BT’s Sustainable Business Program’s work in the SOS Children’s Village at 30 remotes sites in Africa—was high.

This third season in London also gave me a boost. Despite all of the turmoil we see around us, it was obvious that we have begun to again capture imaginations.

From 5,000 young African students, who now are inspired by satellites; to farmers in India, for whom data analytics via satellite will produce modeling that leads to a different way of insuring and financing fields whose yield has been impacted by climate change, Eutelsat, SatSure, SSPI and the global Better Satellite World campaign are shaping the Empires of the Mind Churchill spoke of long ago.

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Purdue University Team Wins Research Competition for Second Year in a Row, Tying with the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez SSPI runs three annual research competitions for undergraduate and graduate students in the US, Canada and United Kingdom. In November, SSPI presented cash prizes to the winning teams from Purdue University and the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez at SpaceVision, the annual conferences of the US branch of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.

Hey, Guys – There’s This Thing Called Commercial Space!

The goal of the competitions is to alert students to the existence of commercial space and satellite, and to generate interest in careers in the industry. Do students really not know how much the private sector dominates the $350 billion space industry? The short answer is “no” – they think first of NASA, and then perhaps about SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, and only a lucky few are aware of the vast satellite, aerospace and analytics business that has grown up over a proud halfcentury of achievement.

SSPI-SEDS competitions force student teams to come to grips with the fundamentals of the business, from orbital mechanics to frequency coordination, and to apply that new-found knowledge to solve intriguing problems. For the SEDS USA competition, the 2017 theme was “Connecting the Space Economy.” We asked them to select some part of the future space economy, from lunar mining to in-orbit manufacturing, and develop a communications capability to support it. It was a big, challenging assignment, and the two winning teams put an amazing amount of time, ingenuity and engineering into it.

Lunar Polar Communications Network

The Purdue University chapter of SEDS USA submitted a detailed plan for a “Lunar Polar Communications Network” to support mining at the Moon’s south pole.

Advising the Purdue team was SSPI Mentor and Board member Ariane Cornell, Head of North American New Glenn Sales at Blue Origin, who connected them with several of the company’s engineers.

The Purdue team’s solution involved three satellites placed in an ingenious elliptical orbit that provided continuous connectivity between Earth and a lunar base located at the Moon’s south pole. The network would use a combination

Purdue University Team Wins Research Competition for Second Year in a Row, Tying with the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez of optical and RF communications to provide very high bandwidth. The design of the satellites and other systems drew on existing technology from major manufacturers. Meet the team and review their report.

The Purdue University team with SSPI’s Robert Bell and Boeing’s Noelle Zietsman

International Partnership Communications Network

“Connecting the Space Economy” was a broad assignment, but the University of Puerto Rito Mayaguez (UPRM) team bravely chose to consider it as broadly as possible. Adding to the drama of the award, the team completed work while Hurricane Maria bore down on the island, and submitted it just days after the storm struck with such devastating force. The team was advised by SSPI Mentor and Hall of Fame member Dr. Denis Curtin, who also connected team members 12

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Purdue University Team Wins Research Competition for Second Year in a Row, Tying with the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez with engineering colleagues including Tom Butash, an engineering fellow at BAE Systems who has subsequently become an SSPI Mentor.

UPRM envisioned a 30-year program that would develop a constellation of satellites in GEO orbit and lunar orbit, complemented with two relay satellites at the Lagrange points defined by the overlap of Earth and lunar gravity, and a space station at Earth’s L4 Lagrange point. The point of this complex constellation was to support not only communications between Earth and the Moon but also deep space missions beyond lunar orbit. The high cost of the program, which they estimated at $357 billion, would require a partnership of multiple nations and companies to execute. Meet the team and review their report.

Boeing’s Noelle Zietsman with UPRM’s team leader and Robert Bell

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Purdue University Team Wins Research Competition for Second Year in a Row, Tying with the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez Boeing Defense Space & Security Recruits at SpaceVision

For one SSPI sponsor, SpaceVision was more than an opportunity to reward students for a job well done. Boeing Defense Space & Security sent a team of six HR and operational executives led by vice president Scott Drach. The Boeing booth at the SpaceVision career fair was mobbed with students eager to connect with the company. The Boeing team held one-on-one interviews with their top choices and Noelle Zietsman, director of space and missile systems in-space capability helped SSPI present awards at the closing banquet.

Hear from Boeing’s Tanya Hughes-Wilson on the experience at SpaceVision 2017:

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A Year of Promise The 2017 Promise Award Nominees SSPI received an astounding twenty-six great nominations for the Promise Awards this year. The winners were honored in October at the Future Leaders Dinner in New York City, which you can see highlights from on page 8! With so many strong nominees pouring in, we would like to share the story of each of these extraordinary young satellite professionals in this and future issues of The Orbiter.

Adam Axelrod

Senior Manager, Hughes Network Systems Adam Axelrod leads the Network Management System software development team for Hughes JUPITER Systems, which is Hughes’ flagship VSAT technology created to support operations on high-throughput spot beam and conventional satellites. Since becoming a senior manager, he has led his team to design and deliver network management systems on time and on budget, all while monitoring and incorporating new technology trends and changing customer needs. Over an eleven-year career at Hughes, Adam has been a key member of multiple software teams, and in his current role, led the adaptation of the JUPITER Network Management System into a platform that could support a diverse international customer base with a variety of systems ranging from very small to very large. He was honored for this achievement with an “Echostar Distinguished Performance Award” in 2015.

Adam serves as a strong role model for team members and also for aspiring students as a speaker for a STEM partnership with 4-H outside of company time.

Richard DiLorenzo

Senior Program Engineer, Globecomm Systems As a Senior Program Engineer at Globecomm Systems, Richard DiLorenzo led a team to create an Internet of Things (IoT) management platform that ensures successful communications in any environment by integrating global multi-connectivity options using cellular, satellite or dual connectivity. His platform combines several different modules into one IoT service delivery engine that is managed from a single interface, allowing customers to select options best tailored to their individual needs. While working at Globecomm, Richard also developed an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) for customers that combines multiple networks’ facilities into one easy-to-access platform. The GUI simplifies connectivity, provisioning, device management and billing, among other services, granting customers better control over their IoT communications networks. Richard serves as a coach and a valuable player on his team, favoring leadership by example as a hard worker who takes the initiative to learn new skills whenever needed and remains approachable whenever his team members need assistance or advice.

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What Have SSPI’s Chapters Done Lately?

SSPI Brazil In 2017, the Brazil Chapter introduced speakers from outside the satellite industry to its events. The local satellite professionals had the opportunity to hear a renowned lecturer from a top business school and also an experienced economist from a top consulting firm. This initiative was highly appreciated by the 315 professionals who attended the 2017 events as it provided a better knowledge about the context of the satellite industry and its perspectives. Stay tuned for 2018!

SSPI Mid-Atlantic SSPI Mid-Atlantic has been actively engaged with a focus on creating greater value for our membership in 2017. We believe our organization is the life blood of the industry. We demonstrate this through networking activities that foster business and employment opportunities from seasoned executives to student members.

Verified in tangible numbers, in 2017 we raised over $7,000 with our Winter Fundraiser in January and $10,000 with our Spring Golf Outing—networking opportunities generating revenue to be distributed to students interested in our niche “space”. Additionally, we held industry-relevant programs and panels that generated another $4,500 in proceeds.

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What Have SSPI’s Chapters Done Lately?

The funds raised allowed our Chapter to award scholarships, grants and hold membership appreciation events. SSPI Mid-Atlantic awarded $3,000 in a Student Competition event while providing $12,000 in Scholarship Grants and another $1,000 in support of the Tides Center. We reinvested over $1,500 in free membership social events to show our appreciation for their continued support.

SSPI UK In some respects it has been quite an introspective year for SSPI UK as we develop our strategy for establishing the organisation as the main society dedicated to professional networking and support for individuals participating in our hugely successful – and rapidly growing - space sector. We have established an excellent close working relationship with the UK Students for Exploration and Development of Space, have kick-started exploration of how SSPI can add to the excellent space education and outreach activities that are undertaken across the country by various organisations, explored ways to increase our active membership and, of course, planned and hosted the SSPI Better Satellite World Awards in London.

We were delighted to award our ‘UK Space Person of the Year’ award to ESA’s Director of Telecoms and Satellite Applications, Magali Vaissiere, for her work establishing the European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications in Harwell, Oxfordshire. Next year we will see continued focus on our membership development, and are planning to host a number of interesting networking events, welcoming speakers from across the world to meet and collaborate with UK space and satellite professionals.

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Thales Alenia Space and others spur LEO craze with new Space Rider vehicle

By Craig Barner, November 30, 2017 - Responding to explosive commercial interest in LEO missions, Franceand Italy-based Thales Alenia Space is leading multiple European organisations in the development of the new Space Rider transportation system.

The satellite builder and Italy-based European Launch Vehicle have signed a contract with the European Space Agency for the preliminary engineering of the next-gen vehicle, which will be deployed on the Vega C rocket. Jointly developed by the ESA and Italian space agency ASI, the Vega C is expected to have its maiden flight in 2019. In October 2014, launcher Arianespace signed a contract to buy 10 Vega rockets from ELV for a total between €260m (US$328m) and €300m (US$378m), depending on delivery.

Thales Alenia Space, European Launch Vehicle and the ESA were unable to respond to messages before the press deadline.

The aim of the Space Rider is to provide Europe with a reusable space transportation system for unmanned missions to LEO. It will carry a variety of payloads to multiple altitudes and inclinations.

Featuring a lifting-body configuration, Space Rider is designed as a free-flying orbital platform, capable of remaining two months in orbit, re-entering the atmosphere and landing. It can be recovered along with its payload, refurbished and reused for up to six missions. Microgravity experiments, on-orbit validations, tests of science and exploration technologies and other uses are some of the potential uses. “[The vehicle] will be reusable, paving the way to larger and more challenging applications, including reusable stages, point-topoint flights, spaceplanes and even space tourism,” Thales Alenia Space Italy CEO Donato Amoroso said.

Other plans, both large-scale and modest, are being formulated along the same lines, including by US-based NanoRacks. In October the deployment specialist said it would keep open its bridge round to accelerate progress on its commercial airlock module for the International Space Station. At a future point, NanoRacks could detach the airlock from the station and attach it to its own platform.

In September, US-based Axiom Space announced it was closing a series A round understood to be in the nine figures to start building the world’s first privately owned commercial space station.

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Thales Alenia Space and others spur LEO craze with new Space Rider vehicle

France manufacturing giant Thales Group owns 67% and Italy-based aerospace company Leonardo holds the remainder of Thales Alenia Space. Italy-based manufacturer Avio owns 70% and the ASI the remainder of ELV.

Billions in LEO investments

Investments in LEO constellations are in the “billions” of dollars, according to a Northern Sky Research report: LEO Constellation Models: Act…Don’t React!

Thousands of satellites are expected to be launched into LEO in the coming years to provide high-speed broadband, among other uses. Indeed, US regulator FCC has said there are currently 400 to 500 commercial satellites with licences from the agency in LEO, but it has received 11 applications that if implemented would entail about 20,000 satellites.

In June US-based OneWeb moved up satellite production to this year after it had received regulatory clearance from the FCC for its 720-strong LEO network, as it contemplates building another 2,000 satellites. US-based SpaceX plans to launch more than 4,000 satellites in LEO by 2024 to provide high-speed internet and is eyeing another 7,500 satellites further on. Boeing (NYSE:BA) has announced a constellation of around 3,000 birds.

Several factors are driving interest in LEO, Northern Sky Research said, including the “insatiable” appetite for bandwidth and desire for connectivity at lower latency than GEO. Technical advances and maturing business models have shown that highthroughput satellites in the Ka-band do not need to be confined to GEO. Along the same lines, developments in electronically steered antennas point to LEO applications.

Even politics are benefitting LEO, Northern Sky Research notes, as the threats to net neutrality are prompting giant internet players to eye satellites for independence.

Diligent Thales Alenia Space

Meantime, US satellite operator Iridium (NASDAQ:IRDM) next month will launch its fourth batch of satellites for the 75-satellite NEXT constellation in LEO for which Thales Alenia Space was the contractor.

US startup LeoSat told SatelliteFinance during World Business Satellite in Paris in September that it had signed nearly 10 strategic agreements for its 108-satellite constellation and is working with Thales Alenia Space to finalise the manufacturing plans for the constellation.

In June British MSS operator Inmarsat said it was switching to Thales Alenia Space for its fifth Global Xpress satellite, despite Boeing having built the others in the constellation.

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How the SSPI Hall of Fame and New Space Exhibit Ended up at the National Electronics Museum

By Joseph Pelton, Founding President of SSPI - On September 16th of this year the Opening Gala for the new Space & Satellite Hall was held with about 125 people attending— including about a dozen members of the SSPI Hall of Fame. This new exhibit, many years in the making, features in an exciting way all of the things that satellites accomplish for world society today in terms of communications, broadcasting, networking, navigation and timing, and remote sensing and weather and climate monitoring. It also explains how this amazing technology works and features an Arthur C. Clarke mini-theater and the SSPI Hall of Fame.

A number of people, including the core development committee worked very hard for a number of years to help raise some $650,000 and worked with exhibit designer David Fridberg to make this exhibit a reality. The IEEE also made a grant to this project that allowed a 40 page booklet “Satellites: Transforming Our Lives” to be written by MIT grad student Rebecca Perry and myself. This is intended as a STEM education initiative to help inspire students that attend the exhibit to join the satellite industry. Along the way, scores of aerospace and communications companies and satellite industry organizations plus scads of committed individuals worked to make this “vision” a reality.

In some ways the history of this exhibit is the history of the organization. Here is that history in a nutshell. In the early 1980s a band of those attending the Satellite Communications User’s Conference in Denver decided that the time to grow beyond what was informally then known as “the groupies.” The dozen or so people that attended that meeting concluded that the time had come to organize a truly professional satellite organization that was international in nature and sufficiently broad in scope so that anyone in the industry—from marketing personnel and insurance providers to satellite scientists and engineers, i.e. everyone—could be welcome. In the first few years the mission of this organization that launched in 1984 was to build membership and chapters around the world. We began to organize meetings around major satellite conferences around the world and built initial international chapters in Tokyo, Paris, London, and Montreal. As the first President I suggested the ambitious goal of building the new organization up to 1000 members and establishing at least ten chapters. Today, of course, the SSPI has some 3000 members. Polly Rash (who subsequently became

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How the SSPI Hall of Fame and New Space Exhibit Ended up at the National Electronics Museum

Polly Rash Hollis when she married Space Systems Loral executive Rex Hollis) spoke up as a key SSP Board member in 1986 to say that the true way to build the SSP was to assume all the trappings of a world class professional organization. (Note: Although we were international from the outset we only added the “I” to the SSP name a few years later.) Polly’s vision was ambitious to say the least. She envisioned organizing a 2 day professional conference with very top speakers, publishing a printed proceeding, and capping it all off with a black-tie dinner with awards to the very top industry leaders—that is the SSPI Hall of Fame--all in a posh hotel.

As is the case with self-inflicted wounds, the Board said to Polly: “Great idea. You’re in charge.”

But Polly did not get to where she was in the industry without organizational skills.

Arlene Krebs, then an NYU Professor of Communications and I not only helped to arrange speakers for the Symposium at the Mayflower Hotel but also helped to edit the publication of the proceeding that we called “Space 30”. The name was chosen because the first gala was in 1987 which was the 30th year of the space age since the launch of Sputnik. We recruited some big name speakers that included Dr. William Pickering, former head of JPL, who with Prof. James Van Allen and Wernher von Braun designed and launched Explorer I, the first US satellite. Also we had Dr. Harold Rosen, who designed the world’s first geosynchronous communications satellite Syncom III and the first operational geo satellite--Early Bird or Intelsat 1.

We also installed our first Hall of Fame Members.

There were doubts that our three old neophyte organization could pull it off, but with hard work from the Board that included Wilbur Pritchard (now deceased), Ben Fisher, Susan Irwin, Mack Schwing II, Peter Marshall, Ben Crenshaw and of course Polly Rash, it all came off flawlessly.

The first gala flowed almost seamlessly under Polly Rash’s meticulous supervision.

Nearly 200 people in elegant finery were led by a Scottish piper into the ballroom. The first Hall of Fame was installed and they included Arthur C. Clarke, who first conceived of the geosynchronous communications satellite, John Pierce of Bell Labs who was the father of The Orbiter What Has SSPI Done for You Lately?

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How the SSPI Hall of Fame and New Space Exhibit Ended up at the National Electronics Museum Telstar and Echo, Harold Rosen who designed the Early Bird Satellite (Intelsat 1), Adolph Thiel of TRW, and COSPAS/SARSAT. The members of the Hall of Fame only existed in the records of the SSPI minutes and then on the SSPI but nowhere else.

About ten years ago at the SSPI Hall of Fame awards when I was still chair of the SSPI Awards Committee I suggested that we should have a “Hall of Fame� for our members at a suitable museum. Robert Bell and I examined a number of possibilities as far afield as a Space & Aeronautics museum on Long Island, N.Y. , the museum at the Astronaut Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, and got advice from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Ultimately we chose to work with the National Electronics Museum (NEM) quite near the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. After discussion a memorandum of understanding was signed between the SSPI, represented by Robert Bell, and the NEM, represented by Michael Simons the Director. This museum that is strongly supported by Northrop Grumman Corporation and started out as Westinghouse Museum had a lot of quality exhibits on electronics but not a great deal on space. Our mission was thus to design a great new exhibit to tell the story of satellites and what they do for society and the world economy. This was the start of a journey that would last many years.

The most inspirational step taken that ultimately led to success was to recruit key people from the industry to help us with the design process and to raise money to support the design and building of the exhibit. It was logical, since one of the objectives of the museum exhibit on satellites was to include the SSPI Hall of Fame, was to recruit Hall of Fame members. The Development Committee that signed on included Denis Curtin, former COO of XTAR and Loral Executive, Ellen Hoff, President of W.L. Pritchard and Company, Ruth Pritchard-Kelly, space lawyer for O3b and daughter of Wilbur Pritchard, Maury Mechanick of White and Case, Ramesh Gupta, then of Light Squared, and Scott Chase, then chair of the annual Satellite exhibit which is the key partner for the SSPI annual Gala. We also retained Karen Footner, an fund-raiser consultant extraordinaire who helped us obtain $200,000 in matching funds from bond bills from the State of Maryland State Legislature.

We developed a plan for the exhibit, drafted the booklet and went after key exhibit items and funds. After a great deal of work, luncheons and call in some chips we got an amazingly wide range of support. Platinum Level of Support came from the John Puente Trust Fund, David Lee and Global Satcom Technology, Northrop Grumman, the State of

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The Orbiter What Has SSPI Done for You Lately?

How the SSPI Hall of Fame and New Space Exhibit Ended up at the National Electronics Museum Maryland, and Hughes Network Systems/Echostar/Dish. Contributions of significant exhibits and donations exceeding $2500 included: Arianespace, Robert Briskman, CompTIA, Comsat Alumni and Retirees Association (COMARA) in honor of Joseph Charyk, Mary Ann Elliott’s Morningstar Foundation, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Intelsat Retirees Association in honor of Santiago Astrain, International Launch Services, Robert and Jane Kinzie, Kymeta, Lockheed Martin, Loral Space & Communications, Inc., Joseph Pelton, Sarah Pritchard and Ruth Pritchard Kelly in honor of Wilbur Pritchard, SSL, and Michael Targoff Family Foundation.

It took eight years of effort to raise the funds, design the exhibit, write the STEM education booklet, and jump through the regulatory hoops needed to make this it all the way to the goal line. The Hall of Fame is now fully functional. The Arthur C. Clarke Auditorium is hosting student tour groups, attendance at the museum has jumped in response to a number of press articles and television news stories about the exciting new exhibit. Soon an 8’ x 30’ display sign is to be installed along the front of the museum facing Nursery role advertising the space exhibit. It is fitting that this exhibit which now covers all of the major satellite applications should open at the time that the SSPI name has now become the Space & Satellite Professional International. I wish to particularly thank all of the generous donors and the Development Committee of Denis Curtin, Ellen Hoff, Ruth Pritchard-Kelly, Maury Mechanick, Scott Chase and Ramesh Gupta plus NEM Director Michael Simons and our consultant Karen Footner who contributed so much to making this new space exhibit a reality. Please enjoy the photos that show the many facets of this new museum exhibit and come visit when you can.

The museum is at 1745 West Nursery Road, Linthicum, Maryland a mile from BWI Airport.

Please see: www.nationalelectronicsmuseum.org for details.

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Turning Promise into Purpose-Filled Careers You’ve heard a lot in this issue about making a better world through space and satellite technology. We can get pretty excited about technology, but it is the people of the industry that make the difference. SSPI has launched a new campaign, Promise2Purpose, to help attract and retain the talent that powers innovation.

Promise2Purpose

SSPI’s newest campaign combines the strengths of our previous ones into a single focus: attracting and engaging those with the potential to make a better world through space and satellite technology, and encouraging their evolution into purpose-driven leadership, while honoring sponsor companies for their own excellence and leadership in this vital area. The Promise2Purpose campaign focuses on three key themes:

Talent Seeks a Purpose

SSPI provides a bridge between undergraduate and graduate studies and careers in the space and satellite industry through student competitions in partnership with the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) U.S., Canada, and U.K. branches, content streams focused on student issues and opportunities, and the SSPI scholarship program.

Better Managers Make a Better World

SSPI provides tips and education on leadership development to managers throughout the space & satellite industry through talent management webinars, the annual workforce study, and substantive articles based on interviews with sponsor HR executives and outside experts.

Leadership in Making a Better World

SSPI is expanding on its successful talent recognition events for young professionals and accomplished veterans alike, including the annual Promise & Mentor Awards, the Better Satellite World Awards and the prestigious Space & Satellite Hall of Fame.

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The Orbiter What Has SSPI Done for You Lately?

Turning Promise into Purpose-Filled Careers

Get Involved

Throughout the Promise2Purpose and Better Satellite World campaigns, we honor sponsors for investing in a better industry that makes a better world.

With your support, SSPI influences university students to consider a career in commercial space & satellite and improves the pathway from school to work through engagement with our sponsor companies. We improve the industry’s talent acquisition and management practices through reports and webinars showcasing best practices among sponsor companies. We offer talent recognition at different career stages across multiple sponsor companies, showcasing their ability to develop the leadership that make a better world. Sponsor recognition creates goodwill for sponsors in the industry and among customers and prospects.

Sponsorship comes with many benefits, including branding in content on the SSPI site and at an annual SSPI event of your choice: Better Satellite World Awards Dinner, held in London, honors companies and individuals whose achievements have made a significant difference in the world – whose stories prove in a compelling way that satellites make a better world.

Future Leaders Dinner has been held for the past 12 years in New York City. A particularly inspiring networking event, the Dinner honors outstanding employees and entrepreneurs age 35 and under and is the culmination of our “35 Under 35” recognition program.

Hall of Fame Reception is held on the first night of the SATELLITE show in Washington, DC. It is a signature, invitation-only event gathering the industry to honor the very best among us: the newest inductees to the Space & Satellite Hall of Fame. We look forward to celebrating this event on March 13th, 2018 at the National Air & Space Museum.

SSPI Chairman’s Reception runs concurrently with the opening of the Hall of Fame Reception. It is an invitation-only, intimate gathering of the industry’s CEOs and C-level executives.

Contact Membership Director Tamara Bond-Williams to learn more.

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SSPI’s Campaigns and Events are made possible by our Sponsors: Better Satellite World sponsors:

2017 Better Satellite World Awards Dinner sponsors:

2017 Future Leaders Dinner sponsors:

Promise2Purpose sponsors:

Advertising Opportunities are available!

As you know, SSPI has transformed its monthly news vehicle, The Orbiter, into a beautiful, pageturning digital magazine you can read from your desktop, tablet or phone, or as a handy print-out to carry with you on travel trips. The Orbiter brings Society news, coverage of the Better Satellite World campaign, and the annual Workforce Study to more than 6,000 members and industry contacts.

Advertise With Us We invite companies to advertise in the new Orbiter. Full-page and half-page ads are available Some SSPI sponsorships include one or more ads with the sponsorship – but now you can purchase an ad directly! Download the media kit or email Tamara Bond-Williams for more information.

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2017 by the Space & Satellite Professionals International The Orbiter What Has SSPI DoneCopyright for You Lately?