Australia looks towards space with force restructure, investment and training
Australia is looking to improve its presence in space with a focus on communications and creating a dedicated segment of its defence forces committed to the domain.
UK-based Isotropic Systems has secured more than £29 million ($40 million) in funding to accelerate growth and development of its multi-beam antenna ahead of a phase one launch in 2022.
The oversubscribed funding round included funding support from the UK government, global strategic investors and venture capital firms. SES and Boeing HorizonX Global Ventures were among the participants.
The multi-beam ground antennas are designed to improve connectivity across the satellite ecosystem. Customers such as military agencies using a single Isotropic terminal (pictured) will be able to connect to multiple satellites.
According to Isotropic, its patented RF optics technology enables the high-performance multi-beam antenna to simultaneously link with multiple satellites in multiple orbits, ‘without any compromise in the performance of each link’.
With funding in place, Isotropic Systems stated on 8 February that it plans to accelerate the production phase in time to support new constellations and satellites launching in all satellite orbits from 2022 onwards.
Isotropic will also open a 20,000ft2 (1,860m2) technology and testing facility near the company headquarters in Reading.
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Australia is looking to improve its presence in space with a focus on communications and creating a dedicated segment of its defence forces committed to the domain.
The Portuguese company’s naval communications system is in service across more than a dozen countries. It has turned to its home nation for support in developing a new vehicle based C2 system.
The Vision4ce Deep Embedded Feature Tracking (DEFT) technology software is designed to process video and images by blending traditional computer vision with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to present actionable information from complex environments.
Persistent Systems has been cleared by National Security Agency (NSA) to transmit sensitive data on commercial networks. The devices are added to the NSA’s Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) component list which also includes other companies’ products providing the same security.
The release of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) has been long promised as mid-year. It is possible it could be as early as 2 June although the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) continues to play its cards close to its chest.
Intelsat outlines how its multi-orbit SATCOM architecture is enhancing connectivity and resilience for special operations forces operating in degraded and contested environments.