When the Tesat-Spacecom supplier award was launched in 2008, one would never have expected it to become so popular over the years. Although the coveted award presupposes a supplier evaluation, which continuously tests all relevant aspects in the supplier's company, this is a comparatively low price for the rare honor.

With Hispasat 36W-1, 25 years after DFS-Copernicus a German communications satellite launched once again into geostationary orbit. On board: a payload from Tesat-Spacecom.

In recent months, experts have composed from academia and industry to draw up a White Paper on the future of satellite communications. A white paper is a summary of the existing technology and gives an overview of how this will evolve in the coming years. To take account of the latest research results the writing team consists of leading professors from German universities. As a representative of business and industry Dr. Siegbert Martin, Head of Passive Microwave Products, was part of this writing team, by which Tesat has direct access to the latest research and a good understanding of future technical and technological trends and evolutions.

According to the motto „PCs for Cameroon“ Tesat-Spacecom has donated several disused computers, laptops and a projector to the Cameroon Christian University Institute, which so could be get a new provision instead of being scrapped.

Initiator of this campaign and messenger of the devices was Dr. Augustine Mofor, who himself, as a contribution to the development of Cameroon, his homeland, gives lectures at several universities in technichal subjects. Just by this activity Dr. Mofor became aware of the situation and developed the idea to help.

The event last year was only the beginning of the cooperation and of a more symbolic nature. In the future, support for the universities of Cameroon is to be expanded.

We see the materials gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum in our every day life. Each of our devices contains at least on of these raw materials, be it gold in the bonding wires, tantalum in the capacitor, tungsten in a traveling wave tube amplifier or tin in a soldered point. The sources of these raw materials are mines in resource rich countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. There the profit out of the export of the raw materials does not lead to a wealthy economy but finances the lasting for years civil war.

The first award of the proclaimed by Airbus Defence & Space "Awards for Excellence" was a great success: from 23 March to 30 April 2015 288 projects were submitted, including five applications from Tesat. Three of them have taken the first hurdles in the selection process successfully!

Sometimes it goes haywire at Tesat - for our TWTAs and MPMs there is only one direction: UP! And this in the truest sense of the word, because most (though not all) of our devices climb to about 36,000 km.