THE ONLINE JOURNAL OF SPACE COMMUNICATION is a major initiative of the Institute for Telecommunication Studies. To be found on the Web at (www.spacejournal.org), the Journal is “a cross-disciplinary scholarly publication designed to advance space communication as a profession and as an academic discipline.” The Journal was founded in 2002 by Don Flournoy, ITS director, and Randy Johnson, Dean, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, on behalf of the Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI), the professional development association of the space and satellite industry.

The Journal is hosted at Ohio University within the School of Telecommunications. Don Flournoy serves as editor with the help of satellite and space professionals and academics around the world. Don Flournoy is a member of the SSPI Board (www.sspi.org), co-chair of the SSPI Academic Council and a member of the SSPI Corporate Sponsorship and Development Committee.

The eight issues currently posted on the Journal and their Guest Editors are:

With the guidance of an international editorial committee, Don Flournoy is responsible for identifying Journal topics and guest editors, maintaining Journal integrity and editorial control and finding sources of funding. The Ohio University Institute for Telecommunications Studies serves as the physical and editorial host for the Online Journal.

From time to time, the ITS provides consultation and training services for the satellite and space industry. For example,

• In July 2004, Don Flournoy was invited by the Global VSAT Forum to represent the organization at the “ITC Stakeholders Forum: Focus on LCDs” hosted in Mauritius by the International Telecommunications Union, an agency of the United Nations. To this conference, the ITU invited the ministers of information and communication from 20 African countries, representatives of international aid agencies and telecommunication providers to discuss a new eAfrica initiative, one part of which is to connect (via satellite and other means) some 600,000 schools to the Internet.
• In March 2004, Don Flournoy was keynote speaker at the International DBS Conference in Seoul, Korea hosted by the Korean Association for Communication and Information Studies. His address focused on “Satellite Security: The Necessity for Copyright Protection.” While there, he also served as consultant to SKYLIFE, the private satellite broadcast service created by the newly privatized Korea Telecom, public broadcaster KBS and other investors.

During 2003-2004, the ITS assisted in the development of an SSPI- sponsored educational certification project for satellite and space professionals to be managed by Auburn University. This education and retraining program will be conducted online with an on-campus component, with and without academic credit.

The ITS was on the design team responsible for the 2003 National Space Education Workshop held at George Washington University. Over 140 business executives, government officials and university professors met in March to hear presentations and discuss the role of education in space development. A “White Paper on Space Education,” authored by Don Flournoy, Randy Johnson and Joseph Pelton grew from the Workshop. The proceedings, images of presenters and the White Paper can be accessed via the front page of the Online Journal of Space Communication (www.space journal.org).

Among the most important contributions the ITS has made to broadband satellite development occurred from 1993-1996 in a series of communication experiments conducted using NASA’s Advanced Communications Technology satellite. In cooperation with the College of Engineering and Technology and the School of Communication Systems Management, the ITS was responsible for writing the contracts for tests on the capabilities and performance of the $500 million Ka-band all-digital NASA ACTS satellite. Don Flournoy served as Project Manager in a partnership that included Ohio University, NASA and Huntington National Bank in disaster recovery, backup and related data applications.

Ten years later, the ACTS satellite technologies, including on-board data processing and switching, hopping spot beams and opening of the Ka spectrum band, are experiencing widespread adoption and use by commercial satellite service providers the world over. Largely as a result of the pioneering work done by Hans Kruse, Principal Investigator of the HNB Disaster Recovery and many follow-on tests, Ohio University continues to be identified with this satellite. Numerous presentations, video stories, press releases, papers, articles and consultancies have resulted from this research. Some of those were:

• “NASA ACTS Satellite: Demonstration of Capabilities,” (with Hans Kruse), a chapter in the 1996 ANNUAL REVIEW OF COMMUNICATIONS, Chicago: International Engineering Consortium, 1996.
• A paper entitled “Use of ACTS Technology for On-Demand Communication using Rapid-Deploy Earth Stations” authored by Hans Kruse, Tony Mele and Don Flournoy presented at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) meeting in San Diego in 1995.
• An article entitled “NASA ACTS Satellite: A Disaster Recovery Test,” authored by Hans Kruse and Don Flournoy, published in TECHNOLOGY BEYOND THE HORIZON, Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Communications Conference Proceedings, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, August 1995.
• "Disaster Recovery Via ACTS: the Ohio/Huntington/NASA Experiment" an invited presentation made by Don Flournoy to the National Symposium on the Future Telecommunications Tools of the 21st Century, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Washington D.C., June 1993. This presentation was distributed nationally via the NASA TV Channel and was incorporated into a NASA film entitled “NASA ACTS: Tomorrow’s Technology Today.”