Large Platform Mission (LPM)

20 December 2016 — ESA, Inmarsat, and payload providers have agreed to continue the very successful Alphasat hosted payload programme for another three years.

13 July 2016 – With support from ESA, a European consortium led by Airbus DS has developed a novel Deployable Panel Radiator that will provide much-needed additional radiating capacity for highly dissipative payloads, such as those planned for the next generation of very high throughput satellites.

5 August 2015 – Having recently completed 100 communication sessions, the optical inter-satellite link between Sentinel-1A  and Alphasat is delivering excellent stability and robustness under various conditions, and represents a global first.

27 March 2015 – UK satcoms operator Inmarsat has transferred its Broadband Global Area Network services to Alphasat, the advanced telecommunications satellite developed in a partnership between Inmarsat and ESA. Inmarsat will be using Alphasat to provide BGAN-based safety services across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Hawaiian Airlines (USA) has announced it will be the first commercial airline installing Inmarsat’s (UK) SwiftBroadband-Safety, a new air safety service for trans-oceanic flights that has been designed and developed through the Alphasat Private Public Partnership between Inmarsat and ESA.