Aireon is close to securing a credit line intended to allow it to catch up on $200,000,000 in overdue payload hosting fees to Iridium.
Aireon’s pending credit line would enable Aireon to pay a total of $35,000,000 in 2018 and $23,000,000 in 2019 toward its debt to Iridium.
Iridium borrowed $360,000,000 in March as a hedge against relying on Aireon hosting fees to maintain its liquidity while paying down Iridium Next construction debt.
Iridium plans to use Aireon payments to pay down its $1,800,000,000 in French export-credit loans for the 81 Iridium Next satellites ordered from Thales Alenia Space in 2010.
Iridium’s profit for the quarter ended 2018-09-30 swung to a $12,900,000 loss largely because of a $39,200,000 increase in depreciation and amortization expense due to more orbited Iridium Next satellites.
Iridium Certus, Iridium’s Next-based L-band broadband service, is expected to start in a month or two from 2018-10-25.
The December launch would enable Iridium to get the entire $3,000,000,000 Iridium Next constellation in orbit by the end of 2018, with the satellites taking until early 2019 to reach their orbital slots.
Iridium had 65 Iridium Next satellites in low Earth orbit replacing a first-generation constellation developed by Motorola and Lockheed Martin that launched in the late 1990s.
The 2018-12-30 launch was planned to use a previously flown Falcon 9 first-stage booster, representing the third Iridium mission to use a flight-proven rocket.
The Ocean Cleanup plans to deploy 60 floating screens with a total of 120 Iridium broadband terminals in its campaign targeting the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Iridium initially planned to complete the Iridium Next constellation in 2017, but manufacturing and launch delays pushed completion into 2018.
Iridium signed a letter of intent on 2018-08-30 to work with Rolls-Royce Marine to explore incorporating Iridium Certus into Rolls-Royce Marine’s suite of Ship Intelligence products.
Iridium received a $44 million contract extension from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency.
Under the Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services (EMSS) contract, Iridium provides unlimited secure and unsecure voice, data, and other services.
The contract extension adds six months to Iridium's contract that began in 2013.
Iridium Certus, a connectivity service based on Iridium Next, is designed to reach speeds up to 1.4 Mbps over the L-band system.
SpaceX used the same first stage for the Saocom-1A mission that launched 10 satellites for Iridium about 10.5 weeks earlier from Vandenberg.
Iridium service provider The AST Group is providing L-band terminals to Ocean Cleanup.
Iridium has 65 of 75 Thales Alenia Space-built Iridium Next satellites in orbit.
Iridium plans to launch the final 10 Iridium Next satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in November.