Deployed Satellite News

Florida-based Harris Corporation informs it has been awarded a US Navy potential US$133-Million broadband satellite communication terminal contract. Harris to deliver up to 120 high-data-rate terminals to support mission communications and morale of shipboard personnel. Terminals greatly enhance shipboard access to high-bandwidth services. Contract brings total potential value to more than $250 million of contract awards to Harris under the Navy’s Commercial Broadband Satellite Program.

The highest detection performance Automatic Identification System (AIS) satellite ever built, will be launched by a Soyuz launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on on 22nd July 2012. AIS is currently deployed on more than 80,000 vessels globally, however AIS base station receivers are mostly based on land and can only track ships moving up to 50 nautical miles off the coast. exactEarth is pioneering space-based AIS services that increases the range, enabling the monitoring of vessels throughout the World’s oceans. exactView-1 (previously known as ADS-1b) was built under contract for exactEarth and will become the fifth deployed satellite in exactEarth’s advanced vessel monitoring satellite constellation.