2016


2016 – Annual Infrastructure – Snapshot

Launching people and satellites into orbit, providing directions to tourists, and warning residents on the Pacific Rim of an impending hurricane…all of these activities require infrastructure, the spine of an industry. A bigger space infrastructure can support more activity, such as the number of orbital launches conducted annually. A flexible infrastructure can rapidly adapt to growth or unexpected changes, such as the increased demand for launch services.

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2016 – Sounding Rockets – Snapshot

Government sounding rocket programs, such as NASA’s Sounding Rockets Program Office (SRPO), use sounding rockets as training tools for future engineers and scientists. More launch opportunities…

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2016 – Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Systems – Snapshot

As the world’s population continued integrating space positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies and services, the number of PNT satellites continued to multiply in 2016, growing slightly more than ##% from 2015. Relative newcomers to PNT space operations, such as Europe, India, and China, grew their PNT constellations, each building an independent…

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2016 – Communications Satellites – Snapshot

The launch of Telstar 1 in July 1962 brought a novel way to communicate between continents and people. Despite changes in technology since then, the type of communications associated with Telstar 1, the television broadcast, is very much the kind of…

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2016 – Satellite Overview – Snapshot

Traditional satellite missions, such as Earth observation, communications, and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT), continued dominating the global space industry, but other missions are coming forward. Air traffic control and ship traffic monitoring satellites are increasing as more governments and organizations recognize the usefulness of these missions. Radio occultation using…

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