Clashes among nations in the future "will include galactic arenas," and there should be a networked approach when there's a cyberattack on a commercial space operator, said Anjana Rajan, White House assistant national cyber director, Tuesday at a Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center conference. She said there's a need to understand space systems are secured by design and to operationalize best practices for defense against cyberattacks, and, to those ends, her office, the National Security Council and National Space Council are working on an interagency policy. Multiple speakers said space should be declared a critical infrastructure sector. “It should have been done yesterday,” said Samuel Visner, Aerospace Corp. fellow. As space and cybersystems become more interdependent, space will be increasingly sensitive to cyber concerns, he said, and there should be a national R&D initiative for space cybersecurity. Adding functional requirements on operations for security comes at a cost, and that R&D initiative could make cybersecurity more affordable and practical, he said. Being able to anticipate adverse cyber conditions in space means having more space-based sensors and contextual telemetry, said Kassandra Vogel, Blue Origin principal space systems security architect. Withstanding a cyber event is going to require incident response exercises and solutions that inform playbooks that then allow rapid decisions, she said.

Amazon's Kuiper prototype satellites launched earlier this month (see 2310110007) "are stable in orbit ... and communicating across all links from Earth to space and space to Earth," the company said Monday. It said commercial-scale satellite production will start by year end, with the first to be launched in the first half of 2024 and beta testing with early commercial customers in the second half.

The FCC Space Bureau signed off on SpaceX's request to deploy V-band payloads on its second-generation Starlink satellites rather than put up a separate V-band constellation (see 2303230007), the bureau said in a partial grant last week.

The Satellite Industry Association echoed concerns the Aerospace Industries Association raised about pending activity to designate outer space as one of the nation's critical infrastructures (see 2309280011). In a letter last week to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, SIA included AIA language about how such a designation could result in a "resource risk" for federal agencies and the space industry and that it also could grease the path to additional space industry regulation.

Rather than an either/or choice between geostationary orbit (GSO) or low earth orbit connectivity providers, the maritime shipping industry is increasingly taking a hybrid approach, Valour Consultancy blogged Thursday. Meanwhile, SpaceX's Starlink maritime service is growing, providing connectivity to thousands of maritime vessels and there has been a "definite slowdown" in the number of publicly announced GSO very small aperture terminal installations over the past year, it said. Danish shipping company Maersk said Thursday its 330-plus container vessels will have Starlink installed, after a pilot trial on more than 30 Maersk vessels.

SpaceX plans to start offering mobile supplemental coverage from space starting next year, said its Starlink website. It said its SCS coverage will start with texting service in 2024, to be followed by voice and data service and IoT service in 2025.

The malfunctioning ViaSat-3 satellite (see 2307130003) won't need to be replaced, but the company expects to recover less than 10% of its planned throughput, Viasat said Thursday. It said the next two ViaSat-3 satellites, ground network mitigation and third-party bandwidth commitments, along with that limited capacity, should cover current and future mobility customer needs. Viasat said it has $420 million in insurance coverage on the satellite and will make a claim before year's end. It said it also will finalize a claim before year's end for the malfunction of its Inmarsat-6 F2 satellite (see 230825000). It said it has $348 million in insurance coverage for that one.

GPS jamming is on the rise in Gaza and the West Bank, with the war between Israel and Hamas, the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation blogged Tuesday. It said the source of the increase in interference -- Israeli or Hamas forces -- is tough to pin down because each could be trying to degrade the effectiveness of the other's weapons and the ability of forces to coordinate and maneuver.

Having launched two prototype satellites Friday, Amazon's Kuiper expects to start providing commercial broadband service by the end of 2024, Amazon blogged this week. It said its three customer terminals will offer speeds of up to 100 Mbps, 400 Mbps or 1 Gbps. It didn't give pricing details but said "affordability is a key principle of Project Kuiper."

Any FCC Wireless Bureau authorization of commercial supplemental coverage from space (SCS) operations should be through a waiver-based approach, AT&T said Tuesday in docket 23-135. Citing SpaceX's proposed use of T-Mobile spectrum, AT&T said that requires waivers, and SpaceX's special temporary authority application filed last week contains none of the needed waiver requests. It said the novel testing SpaceX proposes should be handled by an experimental license. In its STA application, SpaceX asked for 60 days starting Dec. 1 to launch and test its second-generation satellites with direct-to-mobile payloads as they connect with unmodified mobile phones using T-Mobile's PCS G Block spectrum.