Iridium

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 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.

The final 10 Iridium Next satellites are slated to launch 2018-12-30.

SpaceX’s remaining 2018 missions, all using Falcon 9 rockets, include Spaceflight Inc.’s SmallSat Express, the U.S. Air Force’s first GPS 3 satellite, NASA’s CRS-16 resupply mission to the International Space Station, and the final 10 Iridium Next satellites for Iridium.

Hiber partnered with Iridium in 2017 to serve different types of Internet of Things customers.

Iridium prefers to lower spending in order to pay down debt on the $3,000,000,000 Iridium Next constellation.

SpaceX’s 2019-01-08 launch will bring to 170 the total number of Iridium satellites launched over the company’s history.

Aireon used part of the new funds to pay satellite operator Iridium $35,000,000 before the end of 2018 for hosting its sensor payloads on the Iridium Next constellation.

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.

Aireon fell behind on making the $200,000,000 in hosting payments it owes Iridium.

The 2019-01-11 launch completes the $3,000,000,000 Iridium Next constellation.

Iridium has launched a new suite of connectivity products and services that use the $3,000,000,000 Iridium Next satellite constellation.

Iridium expects Certus revenue to reach approximately $100,000,000 by the end of 2021.

Iridium announced a transceiver on 2019-01-06 that provides 35 times the data speed of existing devices.

Iridium received a $2,500,000 contract under the Defense Experimentation Using the Commercial Space Internet program.

Aireon borrowed $200,000,000 in December through a Deutsche Bank-led group of investor funds and used those funds to start paying Iridium overdue fees for hosting its sensor network.

Iridium partnered with Dutch startup Hiber in September 2017 to work together on IoT services.

Iridium declared the completion of its $3,000,000,000 constellation refresh in early February with the activation of the final two spacecraft needed to complete the L-band voice-and-data network.

On 2019-04-09 the U.S. Department of Defense signed a one-month, $8,300,000 extension to bridge to a new multi-year EMSS agreement with Iridium.

Iridium received a separate Defense Department contract renewal worth up to $54,000,000 to upgrade a government-dedicated ground station in Hawaii.