SES announced Thursday that it has targeted SpaceX for two additional Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral to launch more Boeing-built O3b mPower broadband satellites, adding to a few Falcon 9 flights ordered by SES last year to launch the first batch of mPower platforms starting in late 2021.
With the two launches ordered from SpaceX Thursday, SES has reserved at least five Falcon 9 missions for launches over the next few years.
SES is based in Luxembourg and has one of the largest fleets of commercial communications satellites in geostationary orbit at more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) across the equator, radiating television, data and internet services to customers around the world.
SES’s O3b network provides Internet connectivity to ships, aircraft, developing and island nations, and other customers en route using a fleet of 20 satellites flying in a unique equatorial medium Earth Earth at an altitude of more than 5,000 miles, or 8,000 kilometers.
SES ordered seven upgraded Boeing O3b satellites in 2017 to expand the capacity provided by the network’s original 20 spacecraft, built by Thales Alenia Space in France. The satellite operator last year booked two Falcon 9 launches with SpaceX to launch the next seven O3b satellites.
The upgraded Ka-band satellites will form SES’s O3b mPower network. SES says that a single O3b mPower satellite, each capable of generating more than 4,000 user beams, has 10 times the capacity of the current O3b satellite constellation.
The first seven satellites are expected to deliver 10 terabits of total throughput, delivering between 50 megabits per second to several gigabits per second capacity to a single user. But SES expects users’ appetites for satellite broadband to grow, and the company ordered four Boeing O3b mPower satellites earlier this month.
SES announced Thursday that four Falcon 9 rockets will launch the block of 11 O3b mPower satellites. That’s an additional two launches over the pair of Falcon 9 missions SES reserved last year.
Based on Boeing’s 702X satellite platform, the first group of O3b mPower satellites, each weighing about 2 tonnes, will launch in late 2021 on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.
“O3b mPower is the cornerstone of our multi-orbit, cloud-enabled, high-performance network that will serve our business, mobility and government customers in the next decade, and we are only a year away from its initial launch,” he said. Steve Kraach, CEO of SES. “We have a strong and long-standing partnership with SpaceX and we are excited to add the launches of additional O3b mPower satellites that will bring higher throughput, greater efficiency and substantially more bandwidth to our industry-leading network.”
The first 20 O3b satellites launched on five French Guiana Soyuz rockets between 2013 and 2019 on missions purchased from Arianespace.
SES is one of SpaceX’s top commercial customers.
The satellite operator launched in 2013 a loadload on the first Falcon 9 launch of SpaceX to geostationary transmission orbit, the standard drop-off point for telecommunications spacecraft toward operating positions more than 22,000 miles over the equator.
SES also launched a satellite at SpaceX’s first launch of a reused Falcon 9 rocket booster in 2017. The company flew satellites at six dedicated Falcon 9 launches, and has reserved at least five Falcon 9 launches in the coming years, including the four O3b mPower missions.
Combined with the announcement on August 7 that SES will purchase four more Boeing O3b mPower satellites, the companies said they would work together to offer O3b broadband services to U.S. military and other government customers.
“While SES is expanding the O3b mPower constellation from seven to 11 satellites, Boeing and SES have agreed to work together to develop commercial-based service offerings and capabilities for the U.S. government.” Collar said in a statement Aug. 7. “We have built our network to create a multi-orbit, multi-frequency, high throughput, flexible and open architecture increasingly of value to government users.”
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
