TAMPA, Fla. — A telco in the Philippines has called dibs on a small geostationary spacecraft launching early next year that Astranis had reserved for Andesat, the cellular backhaul provider now facing delays to deploy Peru’s first dedicated telecoms satellite.
Orbits Corp, part of Philippine internet service provider HTechCorp, earlier ordered a separate broadband satellite from Astranis that is slated to launch later in 2024, joining a batch the Californian small GEO specialist calls Block 3.
Astranis chief of staff Christian Keil said Andesat-1 is being moved from Block 2 to a later batch of satellites to better align with the telco’s business needs.
He said more details would be announced later for Andesat, who could not be reached for comment.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 is due to launch four Block 2 satellites in the first quarter of 2024, delayed from this year following the failure Astranis announced in July of its Arcturus debut spacecraft.
Joining the renamed Agila satellite for Orbits Corp as part of Block 2 are UtilitySat and a pair of spacecraft for U.S.-based mobile satellite connectivity specialist Anuvu. UtilitySat will serve as a partial replacement for the Arcturus satellite Astranis launched in April for inaugural customer Pacific Dataport of Alaska only to suffer a debilitating malfunction.
Block 3 comprises five satellites and customers for only three have been disclosed so far: The second satellite for Orbits Corp and two for Mexican telco Apco Networks. Astranis has also not yet announced a launch provider for this batch of satellites.
Astranis satellites are much smaller than traditional geostationary spacecraft and are around 400 kilograms each, geared for providing more regional coverage with dedicated bandwidth at lower costs.
Astranis also aims to operate the satellites it builds on behalf of customers, which purchase the capacity via long-term leases.
“Generally speaking, Astranis provides bandwidth as…
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