Firefly Aerospace anticipates a November launch for its BGM1 lunar lander, which plans to deliver commercial, scientific and government payloads to the moon's surface as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, the company said in an FCC Space Bureau application Friday. Firefly said it expects the lander to reach the moon about six weeks later, by year's end.

SpaceX is winning the wholesale satellite data capacity price war, with prices dramatically lower than what geostationary orbit (GSO) competitors are charging in areas such as enterprise, backhaul and maritime mobility, Analysys Mason analyst Luke Wyles wrote Friday. Shielded by multiyear contracts with customers, GSO operators have time to adapt by adding managed services, he said. GSO high throughput satellite capacity prices for maritime and for oil and gas are down 5.3% this year, and are forecast to decline a further 4.5% in 2025, he said. In-flight connectivity is seeing less price pressure from Starlink so far, but that will change starting in a couple of years, he said.

The FCC license for 112 non-geostationary orbit remote sensing satellites granted to Theia Group in 2019 is now EMTech Global's. That license was satellite startup Theia's "largest asset by far," U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel for the Southern District of New York said in 2021 in a docket 1:21-cv-06995 order appointing a receiver for Theia as part of litigation that investors FCS Advisors brought against the company. LTS Systems bought Theia's assets, including the license, at auction in 2023, with EMTech Global then acquiring the assets from LTS and subsequently seeking FCC OK on transferring the license to an EMTech subsidiary, according to EMTech's transfer application. The Space Bureau approved the transfer Friday, said a notice in Friday's Daily Digest.

Move the Transportation Department's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) out of FAA oversight, the National Space Society said Wednesday, endorsing a Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee recommendation. Elevating AST in DOT hierarchy "would address concerns that it currently does not receive the resources and priority it needs to regulate a rapidly growing and increasingly complex space launch industry," NSS said.

NASA's Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy is seeking feedback for creating a framework that addresses contamination and interference from lunar activity, including RF interference, the agency said Wednesday. It said its questionnaire asks about the breadth of interference and contamination concerns, and it looks to clarify community usage around terms like "interference." It said responses are due June 7.

The growing pace of space launches is prompting more conversations between the U.S. and other countries about space objects' state of register, Ryan Guglietta, lead foreign affairs officer at the State Department's Office of Space Affairs, said Thursday during an FCC Space Bureau-hosted workshop about U.S. interagency payload reviews. Establishing a payload's registering state is becoming increasingly complex, Guglietta said. For example, a payload could be built in one nation, assembled in another and have other multinational touchpoints. He said the U.S. is trying to create a shared understanding with other nations of what constitutes a payload's registering state. The FAA spearheads the Interagency payload review, and Stacey Zee, FAA operations support branch manager, said if one agency raises a concern during that review, then the agency aims to resolve it early in the process. Sabrina Jawed, FAA commercial space law team manager, said in a worst-case scenario -- there's no payload approval, even though the payload has been integrated into the launch vehicle and is ready to go -- "we have the authority to say 'hold up.' However, we do not want to do that." Space Bureau Special Counsel Karl Kensinger said integrating a payload into a launch vehicle marks a critical point, and it's tough to move backward from there. The satellite operator must have a license by then or face "significant risks," he said.

SpaceX's Qatar Airways in-flight connectivity deal announced last fall marks a tipping point for the satellite broadband operator, as it's SpaceX's largest airline partner thus far, Analysys Mason analyst Kerry Vincent-Viry said Tuesday in a podcast. She said other airlines will likely pay attention to Qatar's feedback on the deal. Airlines don't change in-flight connectivity providers quickly, so Starlink's next deals probably will come with airlines that currently lack providers, she said. Airlines' in-flight connectivity contracts formerly lasted some 10 years. That time period is shrinking as airlines anticipate the arrival of non-geostationary orbit players like Starlink.

With the record showing non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service systems can coexist in the 17 GHz band with incumbents, there's no reason to delay allowing NGSO FSS services in the band, according to Amazon's Kuiper. In a meeting with FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez's office, recapped Wednesday in docket 20-330, Kuiper representatives also urged that the FCC implement its NGSO FSS spectrum-sharing framework.

The FCC plans to update its orbital debris mitigation docket, its Space Bureau said in a docket 18-313 public notice Thursday. It said it especially wanted comments about whether to analyze collision risks for non-geostationary orbit systems aggregately or per satellite, and about the use of U.S. Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices’ probability of collision metric as a threshold or safe harbor as a means of identifying systems that may need further review. In addition, it said it was seeking updated input evaluating the likelihood of individual satellite maneuvering failures within a multisatellite system.

Between Intelsat's end-user direct relationships and its OneWeb low earth orbit (LEO) partnership and SES' geostationary and medium earth orbit (MEO) assets, SES' proposed $3.1 billion purchase of Intelsat (see 2404300048) gives it more mobility competition options, Valour Consultancy Senior Analyst David Whelan emailed us Wednesday. The high level of synergy between SES and Intelsat makes the deal unsurprising, Whelan said. "It creates a new entity with multi-orbit capabilities and a vendor that becomes a one-stop-shop for Ku- or Ka-band solutions," he said. The deal gives SES direct access to aviation customers -- something it had little of outside of government, he said. SES will likely not want to disrupt the status quo in terms of Intelsat’s current customer base and will look to augment Ku-band service with its own satellites, he said. Between SES' Skala service, its O3b MEO constellation and Intelsat's Flex, New SES will be supplying connectivity to more than 12,000 maritime vessels globally, "so already a strong player," he said. The deal might not help it much in landing new customers, as LEO-only is increasingly the preferred option, he said.