Plus: An 'astrophysics nervous system' for NASA
By Dan Robitzski
Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.
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One thing that's grown increasingly apparent is that spectrum, the frequencies satellites use to communicate with one another, with ground stations or with mobile devices, are a precious and finite resource.
But as megaconstellation operators and others try to claim as much spectrum as they can, a move that would stake their claim for current and future operations, Cailabs CEO Jean-François Morizur wrote to argue that the X-band, the 8.025–8.4 GHz range used by Earth observation satellites, should be preserved from sales. Morizur pointed out that doling out the X-band "risks diminishing our ability to see what's happening on the ground and at sea — just as climate risks are rising and governments need greater clarity about the forces reshaping their territory."
Morizur wrote that governments and regulators should protect X-band frequencies for official use as climate change, war and other global-scale risks loom ahead.
"However attractive telecom cash might look, states are accountable to their citizens for dealing with climate change, geopolitical tensions and extreme weather events, all of which are increasing the demand for fast, reliable imagery," he wrote. "When floods and fires strike, every moment counts. The armed forces need rapid, reliable intelligence. The world can't afford to hobble the systems that underwrite societal resilience. "
See the rest of the article here. |
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Astrophysics research requires having the right instrument gathering the right data at the right time, lest a fleeting but significant event like a neutron star collision go unnoticed.
And we are "about to drown in these missed connections ... with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's 'First Light' and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launching next year," unless NASA adjusts its astrophysics procurements models to quickly build an interconnected "nervous system" of sensors to manage the torrent of data these new observatories will gather, argued Nicholas E. White, a research professor of physics at George Washington University who previously served as director of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
He wrote that "Instead of, say, buying a new X-ray telescope to chase Rubin's alerts, NASA should issue a 'Data Buy' contract — similar to the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition program. NASA defines the spectral bands and latency ('Get me X-Ray data with xyz parameters within 60 seconds'), and commercial vendors bid to provide the stream, not the satellite."
See the rest of his proposal here. | | |
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 | The element assembly wheel of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Credit: NASA
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Germany's recent investments, both at the recent ESA ministerial and into its own national space security strategy, show a growing and significant commitment to building and deploying space systems for national and European security.
In the face of these commitments, NewSpace Capital Executive Chairman Felix von Schubert wrote that, "in order to achieve these aims, the German government can no longer approach defense in the old way. That way was characterized by painfully slow procurement, far too much red tape and knee-jerk preference for a small group of big contractors unable to innovate at speed. Now, to meet the needs of this moment, it will need to look to companies with vision, creativity, ambition, competitiveness and adaptability — virtues most effectively developed in the blast furnace of commercial markets."
In short, he issued a call to action to the investment community to fund the company's building out Germany's space security so that they, backed and reassured by federal commitments, can accelerate and help realize the country's new ambitions in military space.
SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. The perspectives shared in these opinion articles are solely those of the authors. |
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FROM SPACENEWS |  | Meet the 2025 Icon Award Winners: This year's recipients range from a company that successfully landed on the moon to an agency leader who transformed NASA's relationship with industry, making room for commercial lunar landers in the first place. On Tuesday in Washington D.C., we awarded this year's Icon Awards during a program at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center. Learn more about what made this year's class stand out. |
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