Iridium NEXT

RUAG Space produced the thermal insulation for the constellation of 80 Iridium NEXT telecommunications satellites.

Since 2016 Satelles has offered timing and location signals through a channel on Iridium Next satellites that was reserved for paging in the original Iridium constellation.

exactView RT is the core of the exactAIS family of services and consists of 58 payloads hosted onboard the Iridium NEXT constellation of satellites.

Hemeria supplied subsystems for the O3b and Iridium Next constellations prior to moving into complete satellite manufacturing in 2017 with support from the French space agency CNES.

The six replacement Iridium Next satellites were built alongside the 75 satellites launched on eight Falcon 9 flights between January 2017 and January 2019 and are currently in ground storage.

SpaceX used the same Falcon 9 booster to launch 60 Starlink satellites in May 2019, 10 Iridium Next satellites for Iridium in January 2019, and Telesat Canada’s Telstar 18 Vantage in September 2018.

The Falcon 9 booster used on 2019-11-11 previously launched 10 Iridium Next satellites in 2018-07-01, CONAE’s Saocom-1A in 2018-10-01, and PSN’s Nusantara Satu in 2019-02-01.

The Gateway Evolution IDIQ follows an $8,570,000 task order Iridium received in 2016 to ready the gateway for Iridium Next.

Iridium Next is a completed 66-satellite constellation that uses L-band frequencies.

Iridium Next is a second-generation constellation that finished deployment in January and cost about $3,000,000,000 to build.

SMC’s Hosted Payload Office orchestrated the 2017 launch of 64 sensors on 32 Iridium NEXT satellites under the Responsive Environmental Assessment Commercially Hosted (REACH) program.

Peraton supports roughly 150 to 200 hosted payloads on the Iridium Next constellation, including 75 Aireon aircraft-tracking payloads.

SpaceX launched all 75 Iridium Next satellites between January 2017 and January 2019.

The Falcon 9 booster that launched on 2019-02-21 was making its third flight after prior missions in July carrying 10 Iridium Next satellites and in October carrying a radar satellite for Argentina’s CONAE.

SpaceX launched the entire Iridium Next constellation on eight Falcon 9 launches over two years, with the final mission occurring on 2019-01-11.

By the time SpaceX launched the first Iridium Next satellites in January 2017, Iridium had already run out of spares and had lost one operational satellite.

The final two Iridium Next satellites entered service on 2019-02-05 at 2:15 p.m. Eastern.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying the final set of Iridium Next satellites launched on 2019-01-11 under an existing FAA license.

Iridium applied the $35,000,000 it received from Aireon directly to the $1,800,000,000 Iridium borrowed from the French export-credit agency Coface (now BPI France Assurance Export) to help finance Iridium Next.

SpaceX launched the last 10 orbital Iridium Next satellites on 2019-01-11, bringing the number of Iridium Next satellites in space to 75, of which 66 are operational and nine are spares.