September 2019
Extending the life of geostationary orbit satellites
... as Mission Extension Pods (MEPs). MEV-1’s initial service contract is for five years of docked life extension for Intelsat, the world’s largest commercial satellite operator The MRV is an incrementally modified MEV with a robotics payload. The...
November 2021
Space insurance and the future of risk management
... as a surprise that the first space-related insurance policy was written as long ago as 1965 - for the Intelsat I communications satellite (colloquially known as ‘Early Bird’) launched in April of that year. Although it covered only third-party...
May 2022
China’s international collaboration in space: an evolving approach from the Middle Kingdom
... is another option that is becoming increasingly viable: China. Images of the failure of the Long March rocket carrying Intelsat-708 on 15 February 1996. Transactional space collaboration China’s space sector began in earnest with the launch of the...
September 2021
Developing an in-orbit servicing and manufacturing economy
... orbit (LEO), calculating the probability of collision to be between one and twenty percent. Visible near-field image of Intelsat 901, taken by Space Logistics’ MEV-1 from a distance of about 15 m, just prior to docking early in February 2020...
April 2025
Spacecraft anomalies and insurance losses
... normally have enough redundancy in orbit to guarantee their service without needing in-orbit insurance. Artist’s concept of the Intelsat 29e satellite with antennas and solar panels unfurled. Explosive failure in April 2019 resulted in the total...
January 2019
Preparing for a robotic revolution in Earth orbit
... investments in new capabilities. All of these are beginning to yield to the compelling promise of space robotics. When the Intelsat New Dawn satellite was unable to deploy its C-band reflector antenna in 2011 due to the billowing of an insulating...
