The primary two spacecraft in an 11-satellite refresh of SES’s Medium Earth Orbit O3b web constellation are poised to experience a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into house from Cape Canaveral on Friday, lower than two weeks after cargo to the Florida spaceport from a Boeing manufacturing unit in California already totally fueled and built-in for launch.
The 2 O3b mPOWER spacecraft arrived at Cape Canaveral on Dec. 3 after a cross-country flight from Boeing’s industrial satellite tv for pc manufacturing plant in El Segundo, California. Boeing engineers in California linked the 2 satellites collectively into their launch configuration on the manufacturing unit, carrying out a process extra sometimes finished on the launch website within the last weeks earlier than liftoff.
The satellites rode a Ukrainian Antonov An-124 cargo airplane from California to the Florida spaceport. Boeing additionally loaded xenon gasoline into the satellites’ propulsion methods earlier than the departed the manufacturing unit close to Los Angeles Worldwide Airport, an organization official instructed Spaceflight Now. The xenon will gasoline the low-thrust, however extremely environment friendly plasma thrusters on every satellite tv for pc.
The design of the satellites allowed Boeing to slash the time required to prepared the O3b mPOWER spacecraft for launch. As an alternative of mating the satellites and fueling them at Cape Canaveral, Boeing solely wanted to finish last practical testing on the satellites earlier than encapsulating them contained in the Falcon 9 rocket’s nostril cone.
The 2 O3b spacecraft, when mixed, weigh roughly 9,000 kilos (4,100 kilograms) in launch configuration, a Boeing official instructed Spaceflight Now.
The O3b mPOWER satellites will beam high-speed web providers all over the world, offering “fiber-like” connectivity to customers between 50 levels north and south latitude, in line with SES, the Luxembourg-based operator that owns the O3b fleet.
SES already has 20 O3b satellites in Medium Earth Orbit. They flew to house on Russian Soyuz rockets below a launch providers contract with Arianepace.
The brand new O3b mPOWER satellites will function in the same equatorial orbit as the unique O3b satellites about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) above Earth.
“SES’s O3b mPOWER system is a real gamechanger and can rework the best way individuals take into consideration connectivity,” stated Ruy Pinto, chief know-how officer at SES. “Delivering efficiency above all, O3b mPOWER will supply connectivity providers to authorities organizations and enterprises primarily based in probably the most distant areas. In occasions of pure disasters, when networks are disrupted, O3b mPOWER’s low-latency providers can rapidly restore important communications networks.”
The unique O3b satellites, constructed by Thales Alenia Area almost a decade in the past, had 10 consumer beams per spacecraft. The brand new O3b mPOWER satellites, constructed on Boeing’s 702 spacecraft platform, every have greater than 4,000 beams that may be adjusted to focus bandwidth on high-demand areas.
SES has centered on creating broadband satellites for a Medium Earth Orbit, or MEO, constellation, which places the relay stations nearer to Earth than geostationary orbit some 22,000 miles over the planet. That reduces the latency, or lag, in web alerts in comparison with geostationary satellites. As few as three geostationary satellites may present world protection, however extra satellites in MEO required to achieve all over the world.
However that quantity continues to be far fewer than the a whole lot or 1000’s of web satellites corporations like SpaceX and OneWeb are launching into low Earth orbit. Satellites flying lower than 1,000 miles above Earth scale back latency even additional than MEO satellites, however many extra spacecraft are wanted for world protection.
Boeing is contracted to construct 11 O3b mPOWER satellites. Extra O3b mPOWER payloads are scheduled to launch on Falcon 9 rockets in 2023.
O3b stands for “Different 3 Billion” in recognition of the billions of individuals with out entry to dependable web service.
“SES approached us with a imaginative and prescient to create world fairness, by offering individuals with high-speed connectivity the place it wasn’t economically or bodily possible to construct fiber infrastructure,” stated Jim Chilton, senior vice chairman of house and launch at Boeing. “We partnered to create an excellent laptop constellation in house to satisfy that purpose, and we will’t wait to see what SES does because the 702X platform’s first consumer.”
The primary two O3b mPOWER satellites are stacked on on high of the opposite for liftoff at 4:21 p.m. EST (2121 GMT) Friday from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station, Florida. A Falcon 9 rocket will give the 2 satellites a lift into an elliptical MEO switch orbit, then the satellites will use their electrical propulsion system to maneuver into the ultimate round operational orbit.
The O3b mPOWER satellites ought to attain their round 5,000-mile-high perch round April, in line with SES.
Email the creator.
Comply with Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
