SES orders four more O3b mPower satellites from Boeing
By Caleb Henry
WASHINGTON — Boeing will build four additional O3b mPower high-throughput communications satellites for fleet operator SES under an order announced Aug. 7 to expand the second-generation constellation to 11 satellites.
The first seven O3b mPower satellites being built by Boeing under a contract awarded in 2017 are expected to launch in late 2021 on a pair of SpaceX Falcon rockets. A launch date for the four additional satellites was not disclosed. All 11 satellites will operate from medium Earth orbit to provide terabits of mobile broadband capacity for government and commercial enterprise customers.
Boeing is using its new 702x software-defined satellite platform to build the O3b mPower spacecraft. Each O3b mPower satellite will have the ability to beam 50 megabits to “multiple gigabits per second” to customers, Boeing said.
Boeing and SES said they will collaborate on interoperability between O3b satellites in medium Earth orbit and U.S. government-owned military satellite communications systems.
“We have built our network around a multi-orbit, multi-frequency, high-throughput, flexible and open architecture increasingly of value to Government users,” SES CEO Steve Collar said in a news release. “We are looking forward to the first launch of O3b mPOWER and excited to extend our partnership with Boeing.”
SES operates a fleet of 20 first-generation O3b satellites built by Thales Alenia Space, and a constellation of roughly 50 geostationary satellites from various manufacturers.
August 7, 2020 at 05:35PM
via SpaceNews read more...
Post a Comment