TAMPA, Fla. — The primary Astranis-built satellite won’t give you the option to offer business broadband over Alaska for local telco Pacific Dataport because it might’t keep solar arrays pointed on the sun, the Californian manufacturer’s CEO John Gedmark said July 20.
Despite the failure of each solar array drive assemblies on Arcturus, used to position solar panels that power the satellite, Astranis estimates it might get six to 12 hours a day of service from the spacecraft.
While that just isn’t enough to offer continuous broadband over Alaska as intended, Gedmark said the spacecraft could still be used as an in-orbit test bed or for an additional alternative mission.
He said fixing the component issue through software and hardware changes on other Astranis satellites in production should only delay its next batch of 4 satellites by a few months.
Amongst these satellites Astranis still hopes to launch on a Falcon 9 before the tip of the 12 months is a previously undisclosed spacecraft called UtilitySat, which Gedmark said can function a partial Arcturus alternative until a dedicated satellite for Pacific Dataport will be launched in 2025.
Gedmark said he’s unwilling to offer technical details in regards to the component’s issue since it is one among a small portion of spacecraft parts it doesn’t construct in-house.
He also declined to debate the component’s provider, flight history, or whether the problem is roofed by the insurance the corporate took out on the satellite, designed to offer 7.5 gigabits per second (Gbps) of throughput in Ka-band.
Viasat’s 6,400-kilogram ViaSat-3 Americas satellite was the Falcon Heavy’s primary passenger and is having issues deploying a critical antenna needed start broadband services at one terabit per second of throughput capability. Gedmark said Astranis has not seen anything suggesting a connection between the 2 incidents.
A 3rd communications satellite on the Falcon Heavy mission, a smaller cubesat from Washington-based Gravity Space, has passed all health checks and is preparing to enter service in the approaching weeks, its CEO Mark Thompson said.
Arcturus backup
UtilitySat is supplied with transponders in Ka, Ku, Q, and V band spectrum to serve a wide range of mission needs and has customers lined up globally, Gedmark said, although it should now deal with providing connectivity over Alaska.
The identical size as a typical Astranis satellite and likewise with an eight-year design life, UtilitySat’s flexibility means it just isn’t able to the identical level of throughput as a dedicated spacecraft from the manufacturer.
Gedmark said Astranis plans to deploy a full alternative for Pacific Dataport in early 2025 under a business arrangement he declined to debate.
“That satellite can have significantly more capability than Arcturus” was designed to have, he said, by “rolling in all of the improvements we’ve done over just the last couple of years.”
While replacing a conventional large geostationary satellite following an in-orbit anomaly would historically cost a whole bunch of tens of millions of dollars and plenty of years, he said Astranis satellites will be built faster and in higher quantities to mitigate any shortfall.
U.S.-based mobile satellite connectivity specialist Anuvu has ordered two other satellites joining UtilitySat as a part of the Block 2 batch, and cellular backhaul provider Andesat of Peru has ordered the opposite.
Astranis also plans to launch one other five satellites as a part of Block 3 next 12 months on an undisclosed dedicated rocket.
Customers for 3 of those have been disclosed up to now: Two for Mexican telco Apco Networks and one for Orbits Corp, the satellite services arm of Philippine web service provider HTechCorp.
Gedmark said Astranis plans to have multiple UtilitySats on orbit at any given time, enabling the corporate to reply to unexpected surges or changes in connectivity demand.