12/26/2023 0 Comments Wallops island launch viewing![]() Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab With Location Firsts While these are just two prototype satellites, Amazon has an FCC deadline to have half of its constellation launched by July 2026. Primary customer Astrobotic will fly its Peregrine lunar lander to the Moon for NASA. Amazon announced in October that it will launch two prototype satellites - Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2 - for Project Kuiper on the first Vulcan mission, and ULA confirmed the launch slipped to the first quarter of 2023. The coming year is set to see the two prototype satellites launch on a special mission - ULA’s first Vulcan Centaur launch. In 2022, Amazon began to share more details about the planned Project Kuiper Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation, signing a huge multi-launch deal and acquiring a new satellite manufacturing facility. The constellation includes six satellites, but now Maxar plans to accelerate satellites seven and eight with a deal to be acquired by private equity firm Advent International. ![]() The satellites will deliver 29-centimeter resolution and be able to show an object’s true location on the ground within 5 meters - accuracy that can enable 3D mapping and self-driving vehicles. The highly anticipated WorldView Legion constellation will provide a boost to Maxar’s Earth observation capacity, but the first launches for the program have had many delays due to issues with hardware, software validation, and work delays. After multiple schedule slips, Maxar said in its most recent financial results it expects the satellites to launch in January 2023. Speaking of Maxar, the Earth observation operator is also waiting to launch its first two WorldView Legion satellites. Hughes ordered the satellite in August 2017, and originally targeted launch in early 2021. The satellite will increase capacity and support business expansion in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries in South America for a wide range of sectors such as consumer, enterprise, aeronautical, cellular backhaul, and community Wi-Fi, with service plans. Jupiter 3 will bring more than 500 Gbps of capacity to Hughes’ network - two to three times the capacity of Jupiter 2. Meanwhile, Hughes is capacity constrained over the United States, and said capacity limitations are contributing to a decline in subscribers, with added competition from Starlink. With the delays, Maxar agreed to waive more than $50 million in future fees and to purchase at least $30 million of goods and services from EchoStar in 2023. Maxar Technologies is building the satellite and recently announced it will not deliver the satellite to parent company EchoStar until the end of April 2023 because of subcontractor delays and challenging developmental work. The Hughes Network Systems Jupiter 3 satellite was also on the 2022 list, but the satellite program has had even more delays. Viasat built the payload, and Boeing Satellite Systems integrated the bus module, based on Boeing’s 702 platform. The first satellite will cover the Americas and the surrounding oceans regions, the second will cover Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and the third will cover the Asia-Pacific region. Each satellite is anticipated to offer 1 Terabit per second of capacity, delivering speeds to users at 100+ Mbps. Viasat announced the ViaSat-3 constellation in 2015 as a massive ramp-up of on orbit capacity. It is the first Astranis MicroGEO satellites. The Astranis Aurora 4A, aka Arcturus, satellite will support customer Pacific Dataport for broadband connectivity in Alaska. The mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with another anticipated satellite as a secondary payload. In Viasat’s most recent financial results, the operator said launch is anticipated “earlier” in the first quarter of calendar year 2023, and the satellite completed its final integrated satellite test in November. ViaSat-3, the first in a trio of high capacity Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellites for Viasat did not see launch in 2022, but is on the list for 2023. ![]()
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