For a while it looked like the sky was falling on the satellite business. In April Boeing concluded a round of buyouts in its Space & Intelligence Systems unit, part of an effort to slash 300 employees from the division's workforce. A few days later Intelsat, the 49-year-old industry grande dame and world's largest satellite operator, netted only $472 million in a disappointing IPO. Then the U.S. Department of Defense revealed that the Pentagon was renting time on a Chinese satellite-because it couldn't find anyone else capable of doing the job.
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