Astranis Malfunction Delaying Start of Alaska Service

Geostationary orbit satellite startup Astranis' Arcturus satellite, launched in April to bring broadband to Alaska, "abruptly experienced an anomaly" with its solar array drive assembly, CEO John Gedmark tweeted Friday. As a result, it can't maintain full power constantly and the company will have to delay starting service in Alaska while repurposing the satellite for secondary missions, Gedmark said. The faulty component came from a contractor, and all Astranis-designed hardware "works perfectly," he said. Astranis knows "exactly how to quickly solve this issue on future spacecraft that are in production as we speak," he added. The Astranis problems, following technical problems with Viasat's ViaSat-3 Americas satellite (see 2307130003), are "tough blows for the industry," Northern Sky Research analyst Dallas Kasaboski tweeted Friday. "Thankfully, manufacturing is increasing in responsiveness, allowing replacements to be more easily deployed," he said. "Also acts as evidence supporting in-orbit servicing one day."