SES anticipates launching its newest Ka-band satellite on 22 October. The SES-17 satellite completed its pre-launch testing at the Thales Alenia Space facility in Cannes, France. Next up is shipment to Arianespace’s Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana on 22 September 2021. The spacecraft is scheduled to be launched by Arianespace, using an Ariane 5 vehicle.
SES-17 offers a significant boost to Ka-band coverage and capacity in the western hemisphere. Operating in geosynchronous orbit, the satellite will serve North America, South America, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean with Ka-band coverage.
Anchor customer Thales Avionics will add the SES-17 coverage into its portfolio, offering a major boost to the company’s nascent in-flight connectivity solution.
The expanded coverage footprint will enable Spirit Airlines to offer service across its entire route map once the aircraft installations complete. Spirit’s A321 fleet is 100% installed currently while half the A320s carry the gear on board. Installations have not started on the A320neo and A319.
Read More: Solving the Thales Ka-band antenna conundrum
Thales is also the provider for Air Canada’s 737 MAX fleet.
Given the launch date and typical timing to raise into GEO orbit, expect that SES-17 should be ready to enter service by early 2022.
Read More: Antenna woes derail Spirit’s WiFi installation efforts
A favor to ask while you're here...
Did you enjoy the content? Or learn something useful? Or generally just think this is the type of story you'd like to see more of? Consider supporting the site through a donation (any amount helps). It helps keep me independent and avoiding the credit card schlock.
johndoe8025 says
Interesting to see once launched IF Thales will be able to sell SES-17 Bandwidth to North America Airlines given all the major ones have selected Viasat instead.
Seth Miller says
Spirit Airlines (full fleet) and Air Canada (737 MAX) are Thales customers already, so that’s going to be part of the demand for that capacity. I would not expect any of the majors to switch over, but if the price is right they might snag a subfleet. Only after proving it really works and scales with Spirit, though.
johndoe8025 says
agreed on proving performance and scaling on spirit especially over the Caribbean. Snagging a sub fleet MAY be possible but I think that window of opportunity has closed. So there will be a dire need for New customers for using SES-17 capacity given a shift to more agnostic IFEC solutions that window of opportunity may open again but Price and Performance would have to superior vs Viasat etc…