WASHINGTON — The National Reconnaissance Office, the Pentagon agency that designs, launches and and operates earth observational satellites for the U.S. government, said it awarded imagery contracts worth billions of dollars to three companies, significantly expanding its use of commercial space services. Through its Electro-Optical Commercial Layer program, or EOCL, the U.S. agency responsible for ...

New estimations show that the upcoming Jupiter-3 geostationary communications satellite will be the heaviest commercial geostationary satellite ever launched. Jupiter-3, also known as Echostar 24, is being built by Maxar Technologies for Hughes Network Systems, a subsidiary of EchoStar. The satellite was scheduled to launch at the end of 2022, after initially being planned to ...