Green texts (1/6/23)

Happy Friday to all who celebrate. Congrats on making it through the first workweek of 2023. And to the 133 of you who joined us this week, we’re glad to have ya.

In today's newsletter:📱 Snapdragon Satellite🛫 Viasat + Delta Wi-Fi📚 Our weekend picks

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Cat's Out of the Bag

Coming soon, Android users practically anywhere around the globe will be able to send green texts messages from anywhere, even when out of range of any terrestrial cell tower.

Iridium and Qualcomm are partnering to make it happen. Yesterday at CES in Las Vegas, Iridium CEO Matt Desch announced that in mid-2023, several new premium smartphones will hit the market equipped with hardware that allows them to tap directly into their satellite network to send SMS and emergency messages when out of range of a cell tower.

“The vision that we've talked about for a long time, of Iridium being the perfect network to connect people and things on the move…has been my focus, and I think it's going to really come to fruition here in an exciting way,” Desch said in a media briefing.

Over the last year or so, Iridium has dropped mysterious references to a major mobile partner in the footnotes of financial statements and on calls with analysts. Cat’s finally out of the bag.

What to watch for

Satellite connectivity is coming to select Android devices running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 system-on-a-chip (SoC). These systems combine multiple functions—like a CPU and GPU—on one chip.

According to Francesco Gilli, Qualcomm’s VP of product management, engineers didn’t need to make sweeping changes to the Snapdragon’s structure.

• “With the help of Iridium, Qualcomm has been able to implement this technology in a regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC without any hardware changes in the baseband and in the transceiver,” Gilli said. (Side note: Try saying “Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC” three times fast.)

• The only architectural modifications are on the RF front end to allow the phones to transmit data over L-band frequencies.

Qualcomm and Iridium demonstrated the technology on Wednesday in the desert outside Sin City. Gilli fired off a text from a Snapdragon Satellite-enabled smartphone. Within seconds, the text pinged his unmodified smartphone.

Several companies are currently designing phones that use the new Snapdragon technology for release later this year. Gilli said the technology, confined to high-end handsets for now, could eventually be baked into vehicles, smart devices, and more.

Initially, Snapdragon Satellite phones will hit the North American and European markets. Direct-to-cell service will be available anywhere Iridium is licensed to operate. Support for other markets should come down the road.

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Hopefully Southwest Is Taking Notes...

Speaking on stage at CES in Las Vegas Thursday, Delta CEO Ed Bastian announced that the company is ready to deliver on a long-promised feature. On Feb. 1, the airliner will offer free in-flight Wi-Fi from takeoff to touchdown.

Come February, ~80% of Delta’s domestic fleet will start offering free service, with support rolling out incrementally to more jets week by week. Delta aims to slay the final boss—full support across regional and international aircraft—by the end of 2024.

• Who’s footing the bill? Delta has sunk $1B+ into the initiative, Bastian said. The airline is shouldering some of the costs with T-Mobile, which is sponsoring the service.

You knew it was coming…

Most chatter about Delta’s announcement, naturally, is from the vantage point of consumers and travel enthusiasts. We’re here to dish the space angle.

Viasat is Delta’s in-flight connectivity (IFC) partner. Delta says it will have 700 Viasat-equipped aircraft by year’s end. Delta will also be working with Viasat to bring free Wi-Fi to that final boss we mentioned earlier.

In its most recent quarterly results, Viasat ($VSAT) highlighted strong IFC sales. In Q2 FY2023, the company’s Satellite Services unit (which includes IFC services) revenue was $301M. ”Commercial air IFC services drove significant YoY revenue growth,” Viasat management noted. The company provided IFC services to 1,950 aircraft in Q2 FY2023, an annual increase of 20%.

On the horizon, the satcom company is looking ahead to launching its three ViaSat-3 birds. The GEO satellites are expected to bring unprecedented speeds. They’ll be capable of delivering 1-Terabit/second network capacity and delivering flexible, targeted service to customers where they’re located (and dynamically reallocating capacity when necessary).

+ PS: This story was written on an airplane using Viasat IFC (seriously).

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In Other News

• Impulse Space will fly LEO Express-1, its first orbital service vehicle, on SpaceX’s Transporter-9 mission (tentatively set for Q4). ICYMI, check out our Pathfinder episode with Impulse COO Barry Matsumori.

• Beijing and Manila are setting up a space debris alert system. On Dec. 29, the Philippine Space Agency issued a notice recommending precautionary measures to avoid unexpected debris entry from a Long March 3B launch.

• Remember DART? According to researchers, the test planetary defense mission made Dimorphos look like M&M’s after it smashed into the asteroid.

• Florida’s Space Coast hit an all-time record of 57 launches in 2022. 80+ are on the docket this year.

The View from Space

Hubble captured an image of the NGC 6530 star cluster, which sits within the swirling clouds of the larger Lagoon Nebula.