Japanese satellite maker NEC has struck an MoU with Mexico’s space agency to help the country develop spacecraft for Earth observation, communications and other applications.
The deal comes shortly after NEC opened a satellite integration facility on…
Japanese satellite maker NEC has struck an MoU with Mexico’s space agency to help the country develop spacecraft for Earth observation, communications and other applications.
The deal comes shortly after NEC opened a satellite integration facility on the outskirts of Tokyo, where the group said it can assemble eight birds in parallel to help it tap demand for emerging space programmes.
Mexico meanwhile has been carrying out a series of reforms across its industry to break up monopolies and attract more competition and investment. Local telecoms regulator IFT recently published plans to auction the 113W and 116.8W orbital slots as it called for more competition in the satellite market.
NEC CEO Nobuhiro Endo said the country’s reforms, which cover the telecoms and broadcasting sectors, will herald new opportunities for space.
“The Mexican Space Agency has already identified projects and activities of mutual interest and we look forward to building on this agreement,” he said.
Its cooperation deal aims to strengthen the country’s Earth observation, climate change monitoring, global navigation and GPS applications, as well as the satellite communications, control systems and terrestrial networks of Mexico’s space industry.
Francisco Jimenez, who heads the space agency, said: “The field of space science and technology and the value chain of its applications play a vital role in the socio-economic and industrial development of our territories, making this collaboration and technology transfer a definitive reinforcement of Mexican capabilities for developing satellites.”
Around Y9.6bn (US$94m) was invested in NEC’s new facility in Fuchu City, which was partially subsidised by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. It can fit large scale satellites within a 50 metre-tall structure and features a total floor area of 9,900 square metres.
Plans for the factory were announced in January 2013, when NEC laid out goals to marry its low-cost satellites with a small satellite launcher being developed by Japanese engineering firm IHI Corp.
The group aims to push further into the commercial space market and recently exited a money-losing smartphone business as part of plans to target growth.
It announced earlier this year that it had won a contract in the Philippines to provide a disaster prevention system that detects volcanic and seismic activity via satellite. The project for the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, which will begin operating next February, was supported by a grant from the Japanese government.
NEC is eyeing nearly one billion dollars in space-related business by 2020.
Emerging market rivals
However, Japan isn’t the only space nation looking to gain a foothold in growth markets by giving a leg up to its emerging counterparts, with China and Russia also striking similar deals recently.
The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said last week that it had agreed to deliver a second remote sensing satellite for Venezuela.
China provided the country with its first remote sensing satellite back in 2012 with VRSS-1, which is mainly used for land resource monitoring, environmental protection, disaster detection and management, crop yield estimation and city planning.
Venesat 1, Venezuela’s first satellite, was launched in October 2008 and was also made in China. It cost around US$250m, comprising 12 C-band and 14 Ku-band transponders for coverage across a number of countries in Central and South America, as well as Caribbean islands Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.
