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.
Boeing is building the first seven O3b mPower satellites under a contract awarded in 2017. Those satellites were expected to launch by the end of 2021 on a pair of SpaceX Falcon rockets, but current plans call for launching the first three late next year, six more in 2022, and the final two in 2024.
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.
