AST SpaceMobile said its successful two-way voice calls to unmodified smartphones using its BlueWalker 3 satellite were the first-ever direct voice connection from space using everyday cellular devices. It said Tuesday the call was made from Midland, Texas, to Japan over AT&T spectrum using a Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphone.

Ligado plans to launch direct-to-device commercial services with Viasat this year using the Skylo Technologies platform, Ligado said Tuesday in docket 11-109. It said the services will target market segments including consumer smartphone, automotive, and defense applications. It said it also is working with Omnispace on longer-term development of global coverage by combining their L- and S-band mobile satellite service spectrum for direct-to-device voice, text and data connectivity. The Ligado-Viasat-Skylo partnership was announced in March (see 2303020023).

Citing Spectrum Five's withdrawal of its 2020 petition seeking revocation of the Intelsat 30 and Intelsat 31 licenses (see 2304130048), the FCC Enforcement Bureau ordered the petition be dismissed with prejudice, per Tuesday's Daily Digest.

Astroscale signed a loan agreement of about $22 million from Japan's Mizuho Bank, the satellite servicing company said Tuesday. It said the funding will support current and future projects and accelerate its business development efforts. The loan agreement "provides Astroscale with greater financial flexibility to achieve our objective of establishing routine on-orbit services,” said CEO Nobu Okada. The company cut the ribbon on the Denver headquarters of its U.S. operations Monday.

Hughes reached a coordination agreement with SpaceX to ensure operations of its Jupiter 3 high-throughput satellite in the 18.8-19.3 GHz and 28.6- 29.1 GHz bands won't interfere with SpaceX, Hughes said in an FCC Space Bureau filing Tuesday. It said the coordination agreement also covers Jupiter 1 and 2 operations. Hughes said both companies have operated their satellite networks in the 18.8-19.3 GHz and 28.6-29.1 GHz bands with no report of any harmful interference, and the coordination agreement should reasonably extend to any additional SpaceX non-geostationary orbit operations in the bands.

While satellite operators heavily lobbied the FCC regarding a proposed sunset of interference protections of non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service systems (see 2304120023), the commission's decision to go that route isn't likely to end up challenged in court, we are told. The order and accompanying Further NPRM, approved 4-0 at the agency's April meeting (see 2304200039), was released Friday. A lawyer representing a company involved in the NGSO FSS sharing proceeding said satellite operators opposed to the 10-year sunset recognize there's a low likelihood of success in a court challenge, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is highly deferential to the agency on spectrum management issues. The court also has held that the agency can alter the rules regulating a licensee's license, the lawyer said. He said the agency generally has made clear a lot of its licensing decisions are conditioned on future rule-making. He said it's more likely that satellite operators could petition the FCC to reconsider, as the stakes are lower. Per our side-by-side comparison, the approved order axes several sentences from the draft laying out how a degraded throughput methodology analysis should be done to demonstrate a later-round system won't interfere with an earlier-round system. Instead, the approved order says that while the agency is adopting a degraded throughput methodology, it "recognize[s] that certain details of its implementation may benefit from further comment." The Further NPRM seeks comment on various technical details, and much of that language that was in the draft order -- such as laying out three steps for a degraded throughput analysis -- are now in the FNPRM, with the agency seeking comment on the proposed process. When discussing information sharing during good-faith coordination, the approved order adds a sentence stating that if earlier round systems don't share some non-public information "later round systems may have to make assumptions regarding the operations of earlier round systems in order to plan operations and submit a compatibility showing." The accompanying Further NPRM adds a paragraph of questions regarding post-sunset criteria, such as whether spectrum splitting should be the default procedure between systems after the sunsetting of interference protection in order to facilitate coordination. The agency said it also seeks comment on how well a default spectrum splitting process fits in the post-sunset environment. "What does co-equal mean when there are established operators on a co-equal basis with newer entrants?," it asks. The questions were prompted by OneWeb, the FCC said.

SpaceX and space interests weren't downbeat Thursday after the test launch of SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy reusable rocket from the company's Texas launch facility ended in an explosion. "That the vehicle cleared the launch tower and completed the early stages of its flight is a major milestone," the National Space Society said. "We look forward to SpaceX’s next test flight for the Starship system, which will ultimately be the first truly fully reusable launch vehicle," it said. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted it was "an exciting test launch of Starship" and the company "learned a lot for next test launch in a few months." At the FCC's April meeting that morning, Commissioner Brendan Carr quipped that it was "a rapid unsuccessful disassembly," but he added that a successful launch would follow.

Iridium's first price hike in its commercial voice service since 2018 hasn't hurt demand, CEO Matt Desch said Thursday as the company announced Q1 2023 earnings. He said this week's outage of Inmarsat's L-band service over East Asia and the Pacific on its I-4 F1 could benefit Iridium's competing maritime safety service since Iridium's low-earth orbit architecture means there wouldn't be an outage of any particular geographic region. Inmarsat's safety services were subsequently restored. Iridium said Q1 revenues were $205.3 million, up 22% year over year. It said it ended the quarter with 2.05 million billable subscribers, up 15% year over year, with commercial IoT driving that growth. Iridium stock closed Thursday at $65.03, up 10.9%.

Commerce is moving toward a space regulatory framework where there will be one centralized response, instead of commercial space missions having to deal with a variety of offices, Deputy Secretary Don Graves said Wednesday at the Space Foundation's Space Symposium. That vision "may take a little bit of time to implement," he said. That vision, part of the agency's strategic plan, comes as it has established the Commercial Space Coordination Committee as a forum to engage with the agency across departments and offices on space issues, he said. He said Commerce continues to work toward the September 2024 deadline for taking over space situational awareness data and services from DOD, though added it's "not a lot of time." As part of that SSA effort, the SSA system has been rebranded the Traffic Coordination System, he said.

Comments are due May 18, responses May 29 and replies to responses June 2 on SpaceX and T-Mobile filings seeking to establish supplemental coverage from space service for T-Mobile's mobile network using SpaceX's Starlink satellites (see 2302080001), the FCC Space Bureau said Tuesday in docket 23-135.