Roll Out The Red Carpet: Winners Announced For 2024 SIG Awards  

The Satcoms Innovation Group (SIG) 2024 awards were recently unveiled, and four winners were victorious. Categories included innovation of the year, best cooperation, educational project of the year, and young engineer of the year. 

Northrop Gruman and Intelsat received the best cooperation award, whereas Harley Clark from Intelsat won young engineer of the year. Educational project of the year went to Star Group Mexico, and Kacific Broadband Satellites took home innovation of the year. The SIG awards are designed to celebrate the satellite industry. Equally, they are a way to showcase the groundbreaking innovations and solutions coming out of the global space sector. 

SIG Managing Director, Helen Weedon, said: “the calibre of this year’s entries was incredibly high, with so many organisations within the industry developing exciting solutions to reflect the transformation happening in satcom. I would like to congratulate all of our winners on their success. I would also like to thank Intelsat and ST Engineering iDirect for showing their support and sponsoring two fantastic categories.”

Kacific Broadband Satellites Wins Innovation Of The Year

This year, Kacific Broadband Satellites (KBS) took home the coveted Innovation of the Year award. Accordingly, the nomination and subsequent award was for their CommsBox. This piece of technology is labelled “a first of its kind turkey solution”, in that it offers disaster response data to the Asia Pacific. 

Interestingly, CommsBox doesn’t depend on ground technology. Instead, its electrical power source works independently via solar. Additionally, SIG said “it features a 55m auto-tracking maritime antenna to allow it to auto-point and connect swiftly to the satellite.”

Winner 2: Northrop Gruman & Intelsat For Best Cooperation 

The collaborative team of Intelsat and Northrop Grumman saw them win the best cooperation award. Since 2020, both organisations have been working together to launch the SpaceLogistics Mission Extension Vehicle – designed and built by Northrop Grumman. This vehicle will enable greater life expectancy of a given satellite in orbit. 

Thereafter, they both worked collaboratively to achieve “in-space docking” which saw the life of two Intelsat satellites expanded by 5 years. Following a successful run, Intelsat renewed their partnership with SpaceLogistics in 2023. The new deal entailed two Mission Extension Pods to be built, so that “small jetpacks on satellites [can] provide additional propulsion to extend a satellite’s life even longer”, SIG remarked. 

Winner 3: Educational Project Of The Year Goes To Star Group Mexico 

Star Group Mexico, otherwise known as Grup W Com, received the educational project of the year award for their satellite streaming service. This service saw over 25,000 schools receive e-learning and educational streaming material that’s currently in limited supply. Uniquely, the service is not restricted to “location or purchasing power” across Mexico, SIG said.

Winner 4: Harley Clark Is The SIG Awards Young Engineer Of The Year!

Harley Clark, who is an engineer for Intelsat, received recognition for his efforts. He is now SIG’s young engineer of the year, awarded for his role in distributing major entertainment media material via satellite. 

Clark is also experienced in translating convoluted satellite initiatives to Intelsat’s customers. As a result of his efforts, Intelsat has been able to fostered greater networking and relationships. Further, Clark also received recognition for exerting his adeptness in disaster and crisis response and recovery. Equally, for his expertise in enabling global media entertainment permeation.