A new Viasat communications satellite launched in April has been crippled by a problem when unfurling its huge mesh antenna. The problem jeopardizes Viasat’s much-needed refresh to its space-based Internet network that would let it better compete with newer broadband offerings from companies like SpaceX and OneWeb.

Viasat confirmed the antenna problem Wednesday after it was first reported by Space Intel Report. The satellite in question is named ViaSat-3 Americas, and it launched on April 30 as the primary payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. //

The satellite is one of the most powerful commercial spacecraft ever built, with two solar array wings as wide as a Boeing 767 jetliner capable of generating more than 30 kilowatts of electricity. The solar panels deployed soon after the spacecraft arrived in orbit, and the next step was to unfurl a large reflector to bounce Internet signals between the ground and transmitters and receivers on board the main body of the satellite.

That’s when ground controllers ran into trouble. An “unexpected event” occurred during the deployment of the reflector that may “materially impact” the performance of the satellite, Viasat said. //

The spacecraft was built by Boeing, with a communications payload developed internally by Viasat. The reflector was supplied by Northrop Grumman’s Astro Aerospace, said Dave Ryan, Viasat’s president of space and commercial networks, in an interview before the launch in April. //

The reflector is required to focus signals from the satellite onto a small location on the ground. It’s critical to enabling the satellite to reach thousands of users at once, with a total throughput of more than a terabit per second over its 15-year design life. //

Viasat’s geostationary orbit architecture requires fewer satellites for global reach, but their distance from Earth results in longer latency Internet connections. They also need to be much larger and more expensive than SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which the company mass-produces at a rate of about six per day and launches into orbit in large batches on a single rocket. SpaceX has launched more than 4,700 Starlink satellites to date. //

Viasat completed the acquisition of Inmarsat, another major satellite operator, in May for $7.3 billion. Taken together, the combined company has 19 large communications satellites in orbit, including 12 operating in Ka-band, the same piece of the radio spectrum used by the ViaSat-3 Americas satellite. //

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DistinctivelyCanuck said:
a few articles back, we ended up in a discussion about how certain of the secret squirrel agency satellites can only be readied in a vertical integration facility because how the orientation of the bird literally impacts the ability of the antenna to eventually unfold (the Mentor SIGINT birds if memory serves) the force of gravity in a horizontal orientation could cause the thing to not open up once its flipped vertical...

brainstorming off a massively limited information set.

It would be 'entertaining' if it turned out the same folks did the antenna for VIASAT... which was, of course, integrated in a horizontal orientation first, before going vertical.

second massively limited brainstorm:

it would be interesting to see when NG's launching another one of their MEV's (the mission extension vehicles that go to GEO to provide more station keeping fuel).

For a 700 million dollar bird: I wonder if you send a MEV with a hammer and a pair of scissors on the end of a telescoping arm :)

(yes, I'm joking...) But maybe you send the MEV to go have a look at least... "remove before flight" still in place? :)
Click to expand...Hi! Made an account to reply to this.

I work at NG and am currently sitting across from the successor spacecraft to MEV, the Mission Robotic Vehicle, currently under construction. We can do a bit better than that :) if ViaSat calls us, we can probably try to fix them. And better yet: we launch next year.

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Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) Satellite Technology
Northrop Grumman continues to push the boundary of possible by building an adaptable satellite servicing and logistics architecture with our Mission Robotic Vehicle and Mission Extension Pods.
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