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Viasat’s new electronically steered antenna will access Telesat LightSpeed low Earth orbit satellites.
Viasat says it is developing a new, electronically steered antenna for business jets as part of its multi-orbit strategy to provide inflight connectivity across multiple satellite constellations.
A legacy provider of Ka-band communications using geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites, Viasat plans to supply an electronically steered array (ESA) antenna system to access the future Telesat Lightspeed low-Earth-orbit (LEO) Ka-band constellation. The LEO capacity will be integrated with Viasat’s current and future Ka-band satellites to combine the consistency and reliability for which GEO networks are known for with the lesser jitter and latency of LEO systems.
Viasat and Ottawa-based satellite operator Telesat announced a multi-year agreement for Telesat Lightspeed services in April.
“The LEO component gives us enhanced capability from the aspect of providing a better experience for latency- and jitter-sensitive applications,” says Claudio D’Amico, Viasat vice president of strategic market engagement for business aviation. “It gives us a whole new redundancy layer on top of the high-capacity GEO satellites that we have available.”
D’Amico says Viasat has a memorandum of understanding with a “large company” that he declined to identify to develop a flat-panel ESA satellite communications terminal. The expected entry-into-service of the LEO-only antenna is 2028.
Separately, Telesat announced on Nov. 4 that it has expanded its relationship with Farcast, a San Francisco-based startup antenna manufacturer, to deliver an enterprise-class flat-panel antenna user terminal for Telesat LightSpeed service.
Viasat’s foray into LEO satellite capacity responds to the current challenge posed by SpaceX Starlink, which disrupted the market for inflight connectivity with a LEO-based Ku-band service, and a mounting challenge from Gogo, which has launched a competing LEO Ku-band service called Galileo using the Eutelsat OneWeb satellite constellation.
Viasat announced a new JetXP service for business aviation in October 2024. JetXP combines legacy Inmarsat Jet ConneX and Viasat Ka-band services under one brand—a result of Viasat’s acquisition of Inmarsat in May 2023.
The network integrates GX10A and GX10B hosted payloads originally developed by Inmarsat and launched into space from Vandenberg Space Force Station, California, in August 2024 as part of Space Norway’s Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission. Carried by two satellites at highly elliptical orbit (HEO), the Ka-band payloads provide coverage of the Arctic region. The capacity will be made available to business aviation through an over-the-air software release in the second half of 2026, D’Amico said.
Viasat will bolster capacity over the Americas following the Nov. 13 launch of its terabit-class ViaSat-3 F2 satellite from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
Plans call for integrating Ka-band service from the ESA terminal that will provide access to Telesat LightSpeed LEO satellites with tail-mounted Viasat G-12, Gogo Plane Simple, and Honeywell JetWave and new JetWaveX terminals connecting to Viasat’s GEO satellites.
“You can have those terminals installed on the tail of your aircraft and you can add this electronic steered array to the mix,” D’Amico tells Business & Commercial Aviation. “Now you have simultaneous links between a GEO high-capacity satellite and a LEO. We can intelligently manage that link to provide an unparalleled experience from a connectivity standpoint.”
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