{"id":15724,"date":"2016-02-16T00:07:02","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T16:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/viasat-trades-in-falcon-heavy-launch-for-ariane-5\/"},"modified":"2016-02-16T00:07:02","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T16:07:02","slug":"viasat-trades-in-falcon-heavy-launch-for-ariane-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/viasat-trades-in-falcon-heavy-launch-for-ariane-5\/","title":{"rendered":"ViaSat trades in Falcon Heavy launch for Ariane 5"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Artist's
Artist\u2019s concept of a Falcon Heavy rocket at launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Delays in the debut of SpaceX\u2019s huge Falcon Heavy rocket have prompted ViaSat to move the launch of a high-speed Internet communications satellite from the new privately-developed booster to an Ariane 5 flight in early 2017, officials said last week.<\/p>\n

The ViaSat 2 communications satellite, now in the final stages of assembly and testing at a Boeing facility in Southern California, will double the bandwidth of ViaSat\u2019s current flagship spacecraft, which offers high-speed Internet services across the United States.<\/p>\n

ViaSat announced in early 2015 that the ViaSat 2 satellite, expected to weigh more than 14,000 pounds (6.4 metric tons) at liftoff, would launch aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral in late summer 2016.<\/p>\n

But the Falcon Heavy\u2019s development has run into delays, eroding ViaSat\u2019s confidence that the new rocket will be ready to launch ViaSat 2 by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we still have great confidence in SpaceX, it\u2019s clear that a few recent challenges are stressing the Falcon Heavy manifest,\u201d said Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of ViaSat, based in Carlsbad, California, during a Feb. 9 conference call with investment analysts.<\/p>\n

The Falcon Heavy is formed by connecting three Falcon 9 rocket first stage boosters in a triple-body configuration, giving the rocket three times the Falcon 9\u2019s liftoff thrust to haul heavier cargo into orbit.<\/p>\n

With 27 engines firing at liftoff \u2014 collectively generating more than 4.5 million pounds of thrust \u2014 the Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful rocket in the world when it flies from Kennedy Space Center\u2019s launch pad 39A, the space shuttle\u2019s old launch facility.<\/p>\n

But the Falcon Heavy\u2019s first launch has repeatedly been rescheduled from its original projected flight date in 2013.<\/p>\n

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk told an audience Jan. 30 at Texas A&M University that the Falcon Heavy\u2019s first test flight would occur toward the end of the year, perhaps in late September.<\/p>\n

That is a few months later than his prediction last year of an inaugural flight by April, when Musk said work on the Falcon Heavy slowed to allow SpaceX engineers to focus on other pressing projects.<\/p>\n

Dankberg said switching ViaSat 2\u2019s launch from SpaceX to Arianespace will help ensure the satellite is operational next year. ViaSat 2 \u2014 heading for geostationary orbit \u2014 is too heavy to launch aboard SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n

\"Artist's
Artist\u2019s illustration of ViaSat 2. Credit: ViaSat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe transition of the ViaSat 2 launch to Arianespace builds confidence in the launch schedule to meet ViaSat\u2019s goals of bringing new high-speed service plans across North and Central America, the Caribbean and the North Atlantic Ocean by the middle of calendar year 2017,\u201d Dankberg said in a statement.<\/p>\n

ViaSat 2 is key to the company\u2019s strategy to offer higher-speed Internet connectivity to airline passengers, maritime travelers, government users and the oil and gas industry. The new satellite covers seven times the geographic area as ViaSat 1, which launched in 2011, and offers service at lower cost, according to ViaSat.<\/p>\n

ViaSat touts the affordability and bandwidth of its services, which include the introduction of streaming movies to Virgin America and JetBlue passengers via Netflix and Amazon Prime, respectively.<\/p>\n

In its quarterly earnings call Feb. 9, ViaSat also revealed the architecture of a third-generation network called ViaSat 3 to take the company\u2019s broadband network global.<\/p>\n

Consisting of three Boeing-built satellites, the ViaSat 3 program is a five-year, $1.4 billion investment. ViaSat said it has designated one of the ViaSat 3 satellites to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, and another to fly aboard an Ariane 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cArianespace is proud to be entrusted with the launches of ViaSat 2 and one ViaSat 3 class satellite, and thus be given the opportunity to contribute to the implementation of space-based solutions for global connectivity,\u201d said Stephane Israel, Arianespace\u2019s chairman and CEO. \u201cI thus want to express my gratitude to ViaSat for its confidence and for involving Arianespace in the development of its broadband communications network.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ViaSat 2 and ViaSat 3 satellites will fly in the upper position on the Ariane 5 rocket, which typically hauls two telecom spacecraft into orbit at a time. The upper position houses the larger of the two payloads on each mission.<\/p>\n

The swap from the Falcon Heavy to the Ariane 5 rocket, which sells at a higher price, will have little impact on the ViaSat 2 program\u2019s expected cost of around $650 million, said Richard Baldridge, ViaSat\u2019s president and chief operating officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Ariane had a hole in their manifest, and we were able to grab it, and so we think we got a good price,\u201d Baldridge said.<\/p>\n

The lower insurance premium for the workhorse Ariane 5 rocket should also offset any extra costs, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe insurance cost, our estimates for the insurance between the two, just given that there was such an early flight on the Falcon Heavy, was much higher,\u201d Baldridge said. \u201cSo when you take into consideration the two factors, we\u2019re within the estimate that we had.\u201d<\/p>\n

ViaSat 2 was third or fourth in line in the Falcon Heavy\u2019s manifest, after an initial shakedown flight without a customer\u2019s payload on-board and a U.S. Air Force mission penciled in for the Falcon Heavy\u2019s second launch.<\/p>\n

The fourth satellite for Inmarsat\u2019s Global Xpress broadband network is still booked for a Falcon Heavy flight, although Inmarsat officials have said they would make a final decision on whether to launch the spacecraft \u2014 which is considered a spare \u2014 early this year.<\/p>\n

Other payloads with firm Falcon Heavy reservations include the EuropaSat\/Hellas-sat 3 television broadcasting satellite, a joint project between London-based Inmarsat and Greece\u2019s Hellas-sat, and the Arabsat 6A signals relay platform.<\/p>\n

The ViaSat 3 launch agreement with SpaceX keeps the Falcon Heavy backlog steady after the loss of the ViaSat 2 mission to Arianespace.<\/p>\n

Each ViaSat 3 satellite will provide a terabit per second of network capacity, equivalent to all commercial satellites currently in space, the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach ViaSat 3 satellite is anticipated to have as much bandwidth as all the rest of the satellites in the world combined, and that includes all of the high-throughput satellites that are now under construction,\u201d Dankberg said. \u201cSo we think we\u2019ll have the economics to profitably address the most attractive markets anywhere in those footprints.\u201d<\/p>\n

ViaSat aims to tap markets in in-flight connectivity \u2014 for passenger entertainment and cockpit avionics \u2014 residential Internet access, the oil and gas community, secure government operations, and conventional cellular and wifi networks.<\/p>\n

The first ViaSat 3 satellite will launch in 2019 with a coverage zone over the Americas, followed by a second craft in 2020 for European, African and Middle Eastern markets. A third satellite for the Asia-Pacific would come next.<\/p>\n

Development of the first two ViaSat 3 satellites is already underway, officials said.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s concept of a Falcon Heavy rocket at launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX Delays in the debut of SpaceX\u2019s huge Falcon Heavy rocket have prompted ViaSat to move the launch of a high-speed Internet communications satellite from the new privately-developed booster to an Ariane 5 flight in early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1540,498,670,252,678,316,1611,767],"class_list":["post-15724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ariane-5","tag-arianespace","tag-boeing","tag-broadband","tag-falcon-heavy","tag-spacex","tag-telecom","tag-viasat"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15724"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}