Each year, SpaceNews selects the people, programs and technologies that have most influenced the direction of the space industry in the past year. Started in 2017, our annual celebration recognizes outsized achievements in a business in which no ambition feels unattainable. This year’s winners of the 8th annual SpaceNews Icon Awards were announced and celebrated at a Dec. 2 ceremony hosted at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. Congratulations to all of the winners and finalists.
Huge Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) spectrum acquisitions by SpaceX and AST SpaceMobile show the value of these frequencies in the nascent direct-to-device (D2D) market. But they also add pressure on incumbents who were once confined to serving bulky, specialized handsets.
Although the same technology advances and standards driving mass-market D2D connectivity also benefit traditional MSS, legacy players are now up against SpaceX and the immense scale of its low Earth orbit (LEO) Starlink network.
That’s where an ambitious and technically complex partnership between geostationary MSS operators Viasat of the United States and Space42 of the United Arab Emirates comes in.
Their proposed Equatys joint venture would be capable of supporting more than 100 megahertz of L- and S-band spectrum already allocated across more than 160 countries, aiming to create the world’s largest coordinated block of D2D frequencies in three years.
Equatys would evolve existing and planned MSS systems into a standards-based, open-architecture 5G network environment, if the operators can iron out the many finer details.
Notably, the joint venture is being set up as a neutral infrastructure entity, with an investment model similar to that used by cellular tower companies. The “space tower” strategy would integrate spectrum and satellites from multiple tenants to lower costs, offering operators a D2D capability in their home markets without having to build a global fleet.
“Operators would only essentially pay for the services that they can use in their region, and they wouldn’t be paying for dead time over other places,” Viasat chairman and CEO Mark Dankberg said Nov. 7. He was referring to how satellites’ coverage footprints can leave unused capacity elsewhere on the globe.
Viasat and Space42 are positioned as anchor tenants, calling on others to engage as they explore development of a shared infrastructure LEO network.
Discussions are underway with potential partners that include Europe, Dankberg also said on Viasat’s latest earnings call.
In October, the telecoms arm of UAE technology and investment group e&, formerly Etisalat, became the first mobile network operator to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Equatys to explore how it could extend connectivity beyond terrestrial infrastructure.
Equatys is also being styled as a sovereignty-friendly D2D alternative to SpaceX, with executives emphasizing how it would work through existing national spectrum allocations to give governments more control over compliance and licensing.
Still, analysts remain eager for details on how Equatys would be structured and precisely how it would work with partners.
But while cross-border collaboration is common across the global space industry, Equatys represents a major shift in mindset for an industry long separated by proprietary systems.
This article first appeared in the December 2025 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.
Meet all of the 2025 SpaceNews Icon Award winners:
Commercial Space Achievement – The Blue Ghost Mission 1 Team at Firefly Aerospace
Lifetime Achievement Award – Phil McAlister
Individual Achievement Award – Casey Dreier, The Planetary Society
Emerging Space Company Award – Impulse Space
Military Space Achievement of the Year – Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, U.S. Space Force
International Collaboration Award – Viasat–Space42
Space AI Breakthrough – Ubotica Technologies, NASA JPL and Open Cosmos
Deal of the Year – SES’ acquisition of Intelsat
Civil Space Achievement of the Year – Traffic Coordination System for Space in the Office of Space Commerce
Sustainability and Environmental Impact Award – Muon Space
Innovative Technology Award – NASA’s Starling Mission