Anuvu’s first two Ku-band MicroGEO satellites, dubbed NuView-A and NuView-B, were successfully ferried into orbit at 12 a.m. eastern on 29 December by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Astranis-made satellites will support Anuvu’s inflight connectivity service over North America and the Caribbean including for customer Southwest Airlines, which is eyeing eventual adoption of the free inflight Wi-Fi model for passengers.
“Great news — we have acquired and established command authority over all four spacecraft. We’ll keep you all posted as these missions continue to progress,” Astranis CEO John Gedmark said on X a few hours after the launch of a total four MicroGEOs, including Anuvu’s NuView-A and NuView-B, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
SpaceX had scrubbed an earlier launch for the so-called Astranis ‘From One to Many’ mission, standing down a launch on 21 December.
In a statement shared on LinkedIn this afternoon, Anuvu CEO Josh Marks said: “NuView Alpha and Bravo, our Astranis MicroGEO satellites, are in space!
“Congratulations to Astranis Space Technologies on our successful launch, and to SpaceX for putting safety first. On behalf of everyone at Anuvu, thank you to John Gedmark for your leadership, [Astranis’] Doug Abts for driving our partnership, Christian Keil for your coordination, and the Astranis engineering team for your care and diligence in our build. Full credit goes to [Anuvu’s] Michael Pigott, Tim Southard and Anuvu’s satellite engineering teams for your MicroGEO vision and program execution.”
Marks added, “We look forward to entry into service in 2025.”
During a recent Via Satellite webinar, Southwest Airlines’ Matthew Kiesel, who manages customer experience strategy, said the carrier has been focused on making sure it has the right pieces in place to ultimately offer onboard Wi-Fi on a complimentary basis to passengers.
“A big part of our hardware upgrade strategy and increasing bandwidth and things like that were getting ready for this,” he said.
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Featured image credited to SpaceX
