Thales: five spare satellites launched for Iridium

(CercleFinance.com) - Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture of Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), has announced the successful launch of five additional spare satellites it built for the upgraded Iridium telecommunications satellite constellation.


This batch of five satellites follows eight launches between January 2017 and January 2019, for a total of 75 Iridium satellites already deployed that form a fully operational system in low earth orbit (LEO) at an altitude of approximately 780 km.

It said that specifically, this constellation is operating with 66 operational satellites in six orbital planes of 11 satellites each, and will now be augmented by 14 spare satellites in orbit.

As prime contractor for the Iridium NEXT campaign, Thales Alenia Space is responsible for engineering, manufacturing, procurement, integration and on-ground and in-orbit validation of the overall constellation performance.


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