Business of Space: Big decisions for satellite giants – to merge or to share?

City A.M.’s Millie Turner offers up a roundup of the most important news across the space industry, every Friday.

• Inmarsat prepares for rival takeover
• SpaceX and OneWeb pledge cooperation
• NASA’s Artemis programme heads for major test

Inmarsat: Nearly over the dotted line

British satellite darling Inmarsat is getting increasingly closer to a successful takeover by US rival Viasat, as pressure mounts on the business minister for the final sign off.

California-based Viasat won the approval of its shareholders for the £5.6bn buyout to go ahead on Wednesday, which boss Rick Baldridge hailed as an “important milestone”.

Baldrige expects the sale to be finalised later this year, which would see Viasat and Inmarsat merged to build a global satellite giant.

However, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has been urged by defence experts and MPs to block the deal, having been granted new powers to veto buyouts and investments under the newly imposed National Security and Investment Act (NSIA)

“Many advanced and industrialised economies like the UK are now updating their domestic legal capacity and institutions to be able to review and if necessary, veto block or mitigate investments which might threaten their national security,” international affairs professor at Georgetown University in the US, Dr Ashley Leniham told a committees meeting on the NSIA earlier this week.

“During the world wars, concerns were raised over acquisitions that would enable a foreign government to engage in espionage or sabotage… or to buy another company that was critical to its national defence,” she said.

Leniham added that the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified concern, as it spurred the transition over to the digital sphere.

“The digital revolution we have seen has led to new concerns over foreign investment in frontier and high technology companies, especially surrounding telecommunications, surveillance and those holding private data,” she said. “All of which could enable espionage and sabotage in new ways.”

To merge or to share?

While Inmarsat and Viasat ready for a merger, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and taxpayer-backed OneWeb have inked a frequency sharing agreement – promising to move past sour comments each have made about each other’s systems to the US communications watchdog.

In a joint filing to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week, the satellite launching duo said that following “extensive good-faith coordination discussions” their satellites can “efficiently coexist with each other.”

Both had previously submitted comments against each other to the FCC, in both 2016 and 2020.

However, the pair concluded: “By working together and ensuring that first-round systems are protected, the parties have been able to drive more productive use of scarce spectrum resources for the benefit of American consumers and businesses.”

Since the filing was published, speculation has emerged that SpaceX and UK government-backed OneWeb have made peace off the back of the global boycott of Russian goods and services, amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

The UK government is expected to be pleased after SpaceX helped OneWeb with the launch of 36 satellite, which were initially destined for Russian Soyuz rockets.

While onlookers also speculate whether SpaceX made cooperation a condition of it stepping in to help OneWeb.

The collaboration with SpaceX, which owns satellite competitor Starlink, marked a major moment in the global space race, joining together previous rivals.

What’s new in NASA’s Artemis programme?

NASA’s programme to get boots on the lunar surface is heading for a major test next week – and the coming months – as it sends a satellite to gather data in the Moon’s orbit.

The satellite, a cubesat the size of a microwave, is expected to be launched in Rocket Lab’s Electron spacecraft on Monday, having faced a string of delays.

It forms part of a nearly $14m NASA contract, which will provide the US space agency with critical data for its ambitious lunar space station, known as Gateway.

The mission, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), will provide more data about power and propulsion requirements for the Gateway.

CAPSTONE will also communicate with NASA sibling the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbit (LRO) which has been circling the Moon for 13 years.

Not only will LRO offer a reference point for CAPSTONE, the two spacecrafts will allow teams on Earth to measure the distance between each one and hone in on CAPSTONE’s exact location by using it’s autonomous navigation software, called CAPS – or the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System.

If this software works as expected – it could be the basis in which future rockets navigate spaceflight without relying on tracking from Earth, which can be limited in terms of distance.

CAPSTONE is anticipated to reach orbit within three months and then spend the six months in orbit.

“The CAPSTONE mission is a valuable precursor not just for Gateway, but also for the Orion spacecraft and the Human Landing System,” said Nujoud Merancy, chief of NASA’s Exploration Mission Planning Office.

“Gateway and Orion will use the data from CAPSTONE to validate our model, which will be important for operations and planning for the future mission.”