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Rocket Lab has successfully completed a mid-air recovery test – a maneuver that involves snagging an Electron test stage from the sky with a helicopter.

This successful test is a major step forward in Rocket Lab’s plans to reuse the first stage of their Electron launch vehicle for multiple missions. The test occurred in early March, before ‘Safer at Home’ orders were issued and before New Zealand entered Alert Level 4 in response to the COVID-19 situation.

To watch this test, please access this direct link to the YouTube video…

An Electron rocket liftoff. Photo is courtesy of RocketLab.

The test was conducted by dropping an Electron first stage test article from a helicopter over open ocean in New Zealand. A parachute was then deployed from the stage, before a second helicopter closed in on the descending stage and captured it mid-air at around 5,000 ft, using a specially designed grappling hook to snag the parachute’s drogue line. After capturing the stage on the first attempt, the helicopter safely carried the suspended stage back to land.

The successful test is the latest in a series of milestones for Rocket Lab as the company works towards a reusable first stage. On the company’s two most recent missions, launched in December 2019 and January 2020, Rocket Lab successfully completed guided the re-entries of Electron’s first stage.

Both stages on those missions carried new hardware and systems to enable recovery testing, including guidance and navigation hardware, S-band telemetry and onboard flight computer systems, to gather data during the stage’s atmospheric re-entry. One stage was also equipped with a reaction control system that oriented the first stage 180-degrees for its descent, keeping it dynamically stable for the re-entry. The stage slowed from more than 7,000 km per hour to less than 900 km by the time it reached sea-level, maintaining the correct angle of attack for the full descent.

The next phase of recovery testing will see Rocket Lab attempt to recover a full Electron first stage after launch from the ocean downrange of Launch Complex 1 and have it shipped back to Rocket Lab’s Production Complex for refurbishment. The stage will not be captured mid-air by helicopter for this test, but will be equipped with a parachute to slow its descent before a soft landing in the ocean, where it will be collected by a ship. This mission is currently planned for late-2020.

Rocket Lab Founder and Chief Executive, Peter Beck, said the successful mid-air recovery test is a major step towards increasing launch frequency by eliminating the need to build a new first stage for every mission. He congratulated the recovery team at Rocket Lab on a flawless, mid-air recovery test. Electron has already unlocked access to space for small satellites, but every step closer to reusability is a step closer to even more frequent launch opportunities for the firm’s customers. Rocket Lab is looking forward to pushing the technology even further this year and to return a flown stage back to the factory.

Made In Space (MIS) is helping in the fight against COVID-19 by providing frontline healthcare workers with much-needed supplies and equipment.

MIS facilities in Jacksonville, Florida, and Moffett Field, California, are using their additive manufacturing resources to provide hundreds of 3D printed face shields to local-area hospitals to augment the shortage of critical personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies.

Made in Space face shield.

The design includes a 3D printed frame with an adjustable headband that allows a clear plastic face shield to be easily snapped onto the frame. More than 200 masks have been produced over the last five days and are being distributed to local-area hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida, and Mountain View, California.

The worldwide shortage of PPE such as face shields, medical masks, and gowns increases the risk of exposure for healthcare personnel who are ill-equipped to care for COVID-19 patients. Hospitals and frontline workers are frantically implementing crisis capacity strategies to manage the inadequate supply of PPE and medical equipment.

MIS is engaging its engineering, manufacturing and design expertise to assess additional solutions to help in the fight. MIS engineers worked with local-area doctors in Jacksonville to quickly develop a rapid response ventilator adapter to enable a single ventilator to safely support multiple patients in extreme situations.

MIS Chief Engineer Michael Snyder said that in times of crisis, it is important for everyone to come together and the firm has  obligation to support those on the front lines. The Made in Space team is using every available 3D printing resource the company has to produce face shields to support local healthcare personnel.

NASA has selected a new mission to study how the Sun generates and releases giant space weather storms – known as solar particle storms – into planetary space.

This information improve understanding of how our solar system works as well as, ultimately, helping to protect astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars by providing better information on how the Sun’s radiation affects the space environment they must travel through.

A new NASA mission called SunRISE will study what drives solar particle storms – giant surges of solar particles that erupt off of the Sun – as depicted in this illustration. Understanding how such storms affect interplanetary space can help protect spacecraft and astronauts. Image is courtesy of NASA.

The new mission, called the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE), is an array of six cubesats operating as one very large radio telescope. NASA has awarded $62.6 million to design, build and launch SunRISE by no earlier than July 1, 2023.

NASA chose SunRISE in August 2017 as one of two Mission of Opportunity proposals to conduct an 11-month mission concept study. In February 2019, the agency approved a continued formulation study of the mission for an additional year. SunRISE is led by Justin Kasper at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The mission design relies on six solar-powered cubesats – each about the size of a toaster oven – to simultaneously observe radio images of low-frequency emission from solar activity and share them via NASA’s Deep Space Network. The constellation of cubesats would fly within 6 miles of each other, above Earth’s atmosphere, which otherwise blocks the radio signals SunRISE will observe.

Together, the six smallsats will create 3D maps to pinpoint where giant particle bursts originate on the Sun and how they evolve as they expand outward into space. This, in turn, will help determine what initiates and accelerates these giant jets of radiation. The six individual spacecraft will also work together to map, for the first time, the pattern of magnetic field lines reaching from the Sun out into interplanetary space.

NASA JPL artistic rendition of a SunRISE smallsat.

NASA’s Missions of Opportunity maximize science return by pairing new, relatively inexpensive missions with launches on spacecraft already approved and preparing to go into space. SunRISE proposed an approach for access to space as a hosted rideshare on a commercial satellite provided by Maxar of Westminster, Colorado, and built with a Payload Orbital Delivery System, or PODS. Once in orbit, the host spacecraft will deploy the six SunRISE spacecraft and then continue its prime mission.

Missions of Opportunity are part of the Explorers Program, which is the oldest, continuous, NASA program designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the Science Mission Directorate’s (SMD) astrophysics and heliophysics programs. The program is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for SMD, which conducts a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system and universe.

Nicky Fox, Director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, said the agency is so pleased to add a new mission to the fleet of spacecraft that help to gain better understand of the Sun, as well as how the star influences the space environment between planets. The more that is known about how the Sun erupts with space weather events, the more their effects on spacecraft and astronauts can be mitigated.

Startup OrbitFab is working to make orbital refueling a reality and the firm has secured a new contract from the National Science Foundation’s early stage, deep tech, R&D initiative America’s Seed Fund to further the company’s goals.

The contract is specifically for development of a solution that provides rendezvous and docking capabilities in space, managing the end-to-end process of connecting two spacecraft and transferring fuel from one to the other. OrbitFab unveiled its connector hardware for making this possible last October at Disrupt, which it now refers to as its Rapidly attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI).

16U tanker and global array with RAFTI closed.
Artistic rendition is courtesy of OrbitFab.

The RAFTI is designed as a replacement for existing valves used in satellites for fueling and draining propellant from spacecraft, but would seek to establish a new standard that provides easy interoperability both with ground fueling, and with in-space refueling (or fuel transfer from one satellite to another, depending on what’s needed).

Already, OrbitFab has managed to fly twice to the International Space Station (ISS) — last year, the firm became the first ever private company to supply the orbital lab with water. OrbitFab is not resting on its laurels and this new contract will help it prepare a technology demonstration of the docking process it’s RAFTI facilitates in their own test facilities this summer.

Longer-term, this is just phase one of a multi-par funding agreement with the NSF. Phase one includes $250,000 to make that first demo, and then ultimately that will lead to an inaugural trial of a fuel sale operation in space, which OrbitFab CMO Jeremy Schiel said should happen within two years. He noted this will involve two satellites, the company’s tanker and a customer satellite in a low LEO docking, exchanging fuel, and decoupling, and then repeating this process as many times as is possible to demonstrate the company’s capabilities.

Article source: NZE News — read the rest of the story at this direct infolink…

Chris Forrester

OneWeb’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy (under the SEC’s ‘debtor in possession’ rules) on Friday, March 27, was shocking, given that the company had just launched an extra 34 satellites into orbit on March 21.

One can only imagine the nightmare – and no doubt deep depression — taking place at OneWeb’s various offices during the intervening six days.

Adrian Steckel

Following the Baikonur launch, OneWeb’s CEO Adrian Steckel said, “In these unprecedented times following the global outbreak of Covid-19, people around the world find themselves trying to continue their lives and work online. We see the need for OneWeb, greater now more than ever before.”

Steckel also spoke optimistically of more launches during the year, saying, “We think it is inevitable that there will be delays to our launch schedule and satellite manufacturing due to increasing travel restrictions and the disruption of supply chains globally. Therefore, we made the difficult decision to eliminate some roles and responsibilities as we work to focus on core operations.  We are sorry to have had to take this step and we’re doing everything we can to support those affected.”

Now the company, with its ‘debtor in possession’ bankruptcy, is actively seeking a buyer for its 74 orbiting assets and what’s left of the tarnished dream of founder Greg Wyler.

One investment banker, speaking on March 30, suggested that a potential buyer could be Eutelsat, given that the Paris-based geo-operator has no LEO plans.

However, its tough imagining how any satellite player would want the challenge of launching another 600 satellites, with the massive manufacturing obligations and with the even bigger challenge of mounting a sales and marketing campaign.

In a note on March 30, investment bank Exane/BNPP’s Sami Kassab said, “We note that Eutelsat has no broadband LEO constellation project and believe it might find an interest in looking at OneWeb for its orbital rights and market access licenses could be of value for the French operator.”

Of course, while OneWeb’s principle backer, Japan’s SoftBank, was instrumental in bringing OneWeb to its knees by declining further bail-outs, there are other investors in OneWeb who might have the deep pockets to mount a rescue, not the least if which is chip-developer Qualcomm (Q1/2020 revenues $5.07 billion) or even India’s Bharti Airtel (2020 revenues expected to be above $1 billion).

However, the challenges ahead are huge. A year ago, SES CEO Steve Collar was blunt, saying he doubted whether any of the would-be mega-constellation operators could fund the cost of finding subscribers.

Plus, the current debts are significant.  Examining the OneWeb Chapter 11 ‘debtor in possession’ documents, it is Arianespace that is the company’s top creditor and is owed $238 million in unsecured claims. OneWeb signed a contract worth $1.1 billion back in 2015 for a total of 21 launches using Ariane’s Soyuz rocket.  Three of those launches have happened, the most recent at the beginning of March when 34 satellites were orbited.

However, OneWeb also has contracts in place with Arianespace for the maiden flight of its all-new Ariane 6 rocket and has also signed options for two further Ariane 6 launches.

The company is understood to have laid off some 85 percent of its staff and has some $1.7 billion of debt.

OneWeb’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition to the Court seeks a “Restructuring to execute sale process.” The company, in its statement, stated, “OneWeb is actively negotiating debtor-in-possession financing, which, if acquired and approved by the Bankruptcy Court, will ensure OneWeb is able to fund additional financial commitments as it conducts a sale process under Section 363 of the US Bankruptcy Code. Together, these actions will allow OneWeb to meet post-petition obligations to its remaining employees and certain vendors in the ordinary course.”

Should a buyer not come forward and a full bankruptcy follow, then the 74 satellites already orbiting could fall into the hands of the UK government, along with the licenses held by OneWeb/WorldVu.

OneWeb’s shareholders are listed as:

• Softbank: 37.41%
• Qualcomm: 15.93%
• Greg Wyler*: 11.94%
• Airbus: 8.5%

*Greg Wyler 1110 Ventures LLC

OneWeb’s main backer, SoftBank, saw its share price plunging 10 percent in trading on March 30. Other investors, in addition to the listed shareholders, include Coca-Cola, Bharti Airtel, Virgin Group and others.

OneWeb’s Associated companies, also in Ch 11 bankruptcy, include…

•    Network Access Associates Limited
•    OneWeb ApS
•    OneWeb Chile SpA
•    OneWeb Communications Limited
•    OneWeb G.K.
•    OneWeb Global Limited
•    OneWeb Holdings LLC
•    OneWeb Limited
•    OneWeb Ltd
•    OneWeb Network Access Holdings Limited
•    OneWeb Norway AS
•    WorldVu Australia Pty Ltd.
•    WorldVu Development LLC
•    WorldVu JV Holdings LLC
•    WorldVu Mexico, S. DE R. L. DE C.V.
•    WorldVu Satellites Limited
•    WorldVu South Africa (Pty) Ltd.
•    WorldVu Unipessoal Lda  1021823 B.C. LTD

Not specifically itemized is OneWeb’s Florida joint-venture (OneWeb Satellites) with Airbus, which is building the company’s satellites.

In addition to Arianespace, other key creditors include…

• Qualcomm: $8.0m
• Deloittes: $6.8m
• Hughes Network Sys.: $5.3m
• Deutsche Bank:  $5.2m*
• Wipro: $2.5m
• Willis Towers: $1.9m
• Viasat: $1.2m
• Nokia: $988,000
• Redapt: $662,275
• Rockwell Collins: $596,775

*Disputed claim

It is expected that Chapter 11 will affect OneWeb’s London-based parent company (OneWeb Communications Ltd.) and its Jersey (Channel Islands) businesses OneWeb Ltd. and WorldVu Satellites Ltd.  The company’s latest Consolidated Financial Statements were filed in London on October 10 of  last year (for the year to December 31, 2018, the financials show that OneWeb had secured about $3.3 billion in equity and debt financing.) KPMG are the company’s auditors.

There are numerous formal Financial Charges listed against the company, notably with SoftBank Group Corp. on March 18, 2019, which granted SoftBank a Charge over the entire issued share capital of the company (both ordinary and preferred shares).

This failure is a major body-blow to the satellite industry and it will take time to unravel the complexities of the business. There is also a joint-venture in place with Airbus for a satellite-building facility in Florida near the Kennedy Space Centre.

More details will emerge as the bankruptcy process rolls on. CEO Steckel’s statement on March 27, which accompanied the liquidation announcement, was candid, but hopeful. He said, “OneWeb has been building a truly global communications network to provide high-speed low latency broadband everywhere. Our current situation is a consequence of the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. We remain convinced of the social and economic value of our mission to connect everyone everywhere. Today is a difficult day for us at OneWeb. So many people have dedicated so much energy, effort, and passion to this company and our mission. Our hope is that this process will allow us to carve a path forward that leads to the completion of our mission, building on the years of effort and the billions of invested capital. It is with a very heavy heart that we have been forced to reduce our workforce and enter the Chapter 11 process while the Company’s remaining employees are focused on responsibly managing our nascent constellation and working with the Court and investors.”

One might say that the two remaining major mega-constellation operators, SpaceX’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper, both have very deep pockets. They’ll need them!

Note: Additional information about OneWeb’s Chapter 11 cases can be found at this direct infolink…

Virgin Orbit has developed a new mass-producible bridge ventilator to help in the fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The Virgin Orbit team has been consulting with the Bridge Ventilator Consortium (BVC), led by the University of California Irvine (UCI) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), a group formed to spawn and nurture efforts to build producible, simple ventilators to aid in the current COVID-19 crisis.

Pending clearance by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Virgin Orbit aims to commence production at its Long Beach manufacturing facility in early April, sprinting to deliver units into the hands of first responders and healthcare professionals as soon as possible.

As the COVID-19 crisis worsens and the paucity of medical equipment becomes more and more clear, the Virgin Orbit team is strongly motivated to do all that we can to help. On a normal day, the firm is building rockets and other equipment for space launch; the company’s teams are not medical doctors nor is Virgin Orbit usually a manufacturer of medical devices. However, the company does have a team of incredibly innovative and agile thinkers — experts in designing, fabricating, programming, testing — who are eager to lend a hand.

After contacting Governor Gavin Newsom last week, Virgin Orbit was directed by his office to the California Emergency Medical Services Authority (CEMSA) and put in contact with the BVC. The BVC is a team of brilliant doctors, medical device experts, and researchers at UCI and UT Austin who are working around the clock, sharing ideas across a broad national and international network to share best practices and design insights and to accelerate progress on solutions to this equipment shortage.

Today, complex, high-end, ICU-capable ventilators are sometimes the only option available for moderate cases — for people who don’t necessarily need intensive care or have partially recovered. By supplying “bridge” ventilators, Virgin Orbit’s device can free up those critical resources for the most ill.

Virgin Orbit engineers have taken rapid scaling into account from the beginning of the design process, taking advantage of the most common and robust manufacturing and assembly processes. The company’s aim is to have a functioning, deployable bridge ventilator in production in early April. Virgin Orbit would continue on to rapidly scale up to mass production in its Long Beach facility, in addition to potentially activating other manufacturers as soon as the new device is reproducible and production-ready.

Dr. Brian J.F. Wong, Assistant Chairman of Otolaryngology at UCI, said the nation faces a slow-motion Dunkirk, and getting ventilators out there is very important to save lives. The demand outstrips supply, so it is important the government, industry, academia, non-profits, and the community work together to identify solutions, and design and construct them as fast as possible.

Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart added that the company is heartbroken each night as the news is turned on and see the predicament facing doctors and nurses as they heroically work to save lives. Dan has never seen the company’s team working harder and has also never seen ideas moving quicker from design to prototype. Virgin Orbit is hopeful that this device can help as all prepare for the challenges ahead.

A compressed preview image of ICEYE radar satellite imagery,
originally acquired at 25 cm resolution, showing oil tanks
in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

ICEYE has unveiled their latest capability of 25 cm. resolution imaging with synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) smallsats, using the company’s current on-orbit, commercial SAR satellite constellation.

With this very high resolution imaging capability, ICEYE SAR data achieves the same resolution class provided by larger, conventional commercial SAR satellites operating at their highest performance.

ICEYE successfully launched its first SAR satellite in January of 2018, ICEYE-X1, which achieved 10×10 meter resolution data capabilities, while also becoming the World’s first SAR satellite mission under 100 kilograms (220 pounds) in launch mass. With the company’s latest development of 25 cm. imaging from its current commercial SAR satellite constellation of three spacecraft, ICEYE data achieves the finest classification of resolution in the commercial SAR market.

Following standard industry definitions, the native slant plane resolution of the newly unveiled SAR data is 25 cm. in the azimuth direction, and 50 cm. in the range direction, before ground-plane adjustments are applied. The finest resolution data will be provided to customers in ICEYE’s standard product formats that are accessible with standard Geographic Information System (GIS) tools.

Pekka Laurila, CSO and Co-founder, ICEYE, stated that before, these resolutions have been exclusively reserved for the larger, traditional SAR spacecraft. This resolution is operationally expected to be available for ICEYE customers mid-2020 from the current on-orbit constellation.

Dr. Mark Matossian, CEO of the US subsidiary of ICEYE, noted that site activity monitoring based on very high resolution SAR data enables the firm’s customers to unlock new insights in virtually all use cases that use ICEYE’s current 1-meter resolution imaging.” — 25 cm. resolution SAR imaging is ground-breaking to come from the world’s smallest SAR satellites. Commercial and government SAR customers will be able to achieve very detailed change detection, perform improved object classification, and track ever smaller objects from orbit.

Rocket Lab has postponed the launch of its next mission in response to the COVID-19 situation. The company has posted the following…

In response to the evolving COVID-19 situation, we have paused launch preparations for our next mission to protect the health and safety of Rocket Lab team members, our families, and the wider community.

The mission was scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand on 30 March UTC. Launch preparations have been paused, however, following the New Zealand Government’s announcement on 23 March NZDT to implement the Level 4 COVID-19 response which requires most businesses to close and instructs people to stay at home. We commend the government for taking this drastic but necessary step to limit the spread of COVID-19.

We have the full support of our customers in pausing operations and we are grateful for their understanding in these challenging times. We are working with the government, health officials, and our customers to determine when launch operations can resume. The launch vehicle and ground systems will remain in a state of readiness for launch as the evolving situation allows it. The majority of our team is working from home with the exception of a few essential personnel who are monitoring and maintaining critical systems.

In recent years, we have placed an increased emphasis on delivering responsive launch capability for our customers, which means having launch vehicles and pads ready for rapid call-up launch capability. As a result of this approach, we’re fortunate to have enough launch vehicles ready that we can effectively manage a pause in production and still have vehicles available for launch as soon as conditions allow.

In the days, weeks, and months to come, we’ll be following the advice of the government and health authorities to protect our teams in the United States and New Zealand.

Our deepest thanks go to the medical professionals, scientists and researchers, supermarket workers, and all those providing essential services in these trying times. We are grateful for all that you do.

Be safe and look out for each other.

At 8:16 a.m. EDT, or 12:16 UTC, on Wednesday, March 18, SpaceX launched their sixth Starlink mission.

The company’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle lifted off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Falcon 9’s first stage previously supported the Iridium-7 NEXT mission in July of 2018, the SAOCOM 1A mission in October of 2018, the Nusantara Satu mission in February of 2019, and the second launch of Starlink in November of 2019. Falcon 9’s fairing previously supported the first launch of Starlink in May 2019.

The 6th SpaceX Falcon launch of 60 Starlink satellites from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Starlink satellites deployed in an elliptical orbit approximately 15 minutes after liftoff. Prior to orbit raise, SpaceX engineers conducted data reviews to ensure all Starlink satellites are operating as intended. Once the checkouts are complete, the satellites will then use their onboard ion thrusters to move into their intended orbits and an operational altitude of 550 km.

Watch a video replay of this launch’s webcast at this direct link…

The recovery attempt of the launch vehicle’s first stage was not successful.

Lynk (Lynk Global, Inc.) has successfully connected a satellite in LEO to an ordinary mobile phone on Earth.

The technical breakthrough enabled Lynk to send the world’s first ever text message from space to a mobile phone. This milestone, witnessed by independent third-party observers, represents the critical, industry-first next step for Lynk’s vision to use satellites to provide broadband services directly to more than five billion mobile phones on the planet, everywhere.

Lynk’s historic test took place on February 24, 2020, using the firm’s patented “cell tower in space” technology — LEO smallsats that connect directly to unmodified mobile phones. Lynk has successfully repeated the test multiple times with independent observers.

A video recording of this history-making event can be found at this direct link…

This milestone is the culmination of over a year of satellite-to-phone-on-the-ground testing involving multiple payloads in space.

Tyghe Speidel, Co-founder and VP of Technology of Lynk and the inventor of the core breakthrough technology, stated,  that this is a critical verification of the company’s revolutionary radio access network technology’s ability to compensate for the effects of placing the cell tower in orbit, which mobile standards were not designed to accommodate.

This breakthrough represents a key step in advancing Lynk’s vision to provide universal broadband connectivity to the over five billion people who have mobile phones but cannot access wireless signals everywhere. Lynk has solved what was widely considered an impossible problem in a one trillion-dollar-a-year global industry — how to provide connectivity to mobile phones across the planet, when it is cost-prohibitive to build and operate cell towers everywhere, especially in less populated areas. Lynk’s technology solves this problem of providing mobile broadband coverage everywhere on Earth, a $300-400 billion a year opportunity.

Charles Miller, Co-Founder and CEO of Lynk, noted that in collaboration with nearly 30 mobile network operator partners, Lynk is actively working to deploy the first commercial product. With the permission of regulators, Lynk is confident that the company can bring a world-first solution to the market to tens-of-millions of people by the end of 2020. This is a game changer for the billions of people who own a mobile phone, for the billions who do not have affordable connectivity, and for the entire mobile communications industry. Lynk makes the impossible possible. In the near future, you will stay connected everywhere — all the time.

The successful tests also prove that Lynk’s Everyone Everywhere Emergency alerts are feasible using Lynk’s orbiting satellites. The startup’s now proven technology will enable people everywhere to get potentially life-saving alerts — from the farthest parts of the ocean, to rural areas, and to the most remote islands — of impending natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires, and tsunamis. Lynk’s breakthrough will provide emergency responders with assured mission-critical communications during natural disasters when traditional ground-based cellular networks are down.

Steve Case, the Co-Founder of AOL and Chairman and CEO of the DC-based investment firm Revolution (an investor in Lynk via Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund), added that connectivity changes lives and saves lives. Lynk’s successful test brings the company one step closer to providing the 2+ billion people around the world who live and work in rural communities with affordable connectivity and the immeasurable social and economic benefits that come with it.

Mark Foster, the inventor of cell phone number portability and a Founding Partner at Blazar Ventures, an investor in Lynk, added that the company is proud of Lynk’s revolutionary and industry-transformative accomplishment. Lynk will touch the lives of billions – by connecting directly to their standard mobile phones from satellites in orbit – and provide a desperately needed alternative to conventional terrestrial towers for mobile network operators to extend coverage everywhere. Lynk’s rapid prototyping and innovative space access strategies are a key part of their success, and Blazar Ventures looks forward to Lynk’s introduction of the world’s-first satellite-to-standard mobile phone service to tens-of-millions of people by the end of 2020.

Lynk has already launched its fourth “cell tower in space” spacecraft on the SpaceX’s CRS-20 mission on March 6th. This spacecraft, which is named Lynk The World, will allow the company to expand testing in the Summer of 2020 to additional countries and partners.