Global communications company ViaSat’s first ViaSat-3 satellite has successfully completed payload integration and performance testing.
The completion marks a key milestone before its launch, which is planned to take place early next year.
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ViaSat-3 has been transported to Boeing Satellite Systems facility in El Segundo, California, US. It is one of three satellites that comprise the ViaSat-3 global constellation in geostationary orbit.
The first Ka-band communications satellite will provide high-speed internet access to the Americas and the regions of the neighbouring oceans.
The second and third satellites are ViaSat-3 (EMEA) and ViaSat-3 (APAC).
Viasat space and commercial networks president Dave Ryan said: “This is an incredibly exciting time for Viasat as the first of the three high-powered ViaSat-3 satellites in our global constellation enters the final stages of production.
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By GlobalData“Once complete, we will be ready to put the world’s highest-capacity single satellite into geostationary orbit to serve the world by delivering broadband to the hardest-to-reach areas anywhere — on the ground, in the air and at sea.”
The ViaSat-3 constellation is expected to approximately deliver eight times more capacity than the company’s existing fleet combined.
Each of the satellite is designed to generate payload power exceeding 20kW.
For 15 years or more, these satellites will deliver more than 3,000 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of capacity or three Terabits per second (Tbps).
Following the payload integration with Boeing’s 702 platform-based bus module, the first satellite will be put through environmental testing.
Ryan added, “While the payload was assembled at Viasat’s Tempe, AZ facility, the effort was company-wide.
“From Tempe, to the antenna expertise in Duluth (GA), to Germantown (MD) for their software and systems engineering know-how and other offices around the world from Chennai, India, to Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as at our Carlsbad headquarters, all of these teams worked together to come up with a totally unique way to not only build this spacecraft but to test it in record time.”
