Nearly 20 years ago Iridium and Aireon launched a partnership to bring aircraft tracking to space. This week that partnership (and Iridium’s 39% ownership stake) transformed to a full acquisition, allowing for accelerated innovation and alignment of the operations.
The aviation industry is now entering an era of growing air traffic, denser airspace, autonomous aircraft, and greater expectations for safety and resiliency. Bringing Aireon fully inside Iridium better positions us to build what’s needed to support the future of aviation, including more innovations like the future introduction of space-based VHF communications.
– Matt Desch, Iridium CEO
On the surface, the deal enables Aireon’s other investors – mostly Air Navigation Service Partners like NavCanada and the UK’s NATS – to get away from being owners and simply be customers of a platform positioned to succeed. It includes decade-long contracts ensuring success on both sides.
Speaking to the deal, Aireon CEO Don Thoma added, “Becoming part of Iridium is a natural next step for our team, our customers, and our roadmap, particularly as our data products expand into new areas like turbulence detection and aviation data analytics.”
Iridium CEO Matt Desch maintains his longstanding position that the company is not keen to get involved in what he describes as commodity connectivity. There are other operators with more satellites better suited to those efforts. Instead, Iridium will remain focused on “unique, high-quality safety areas” where demand remains strong, a premium price can be extracted, and where Iridium delivers successfully today. With this acquisition, Desch sees significant opportunities for additional investment and development in new products.
Critically, Iridium notes that none of the new services will require changes to hardware on the aircraft. As with the original Aireon product using ADS-B signals from existing transmitters, everyone involved recognizes the challenges with certification and implementation of on-board equipment. The same cannot be said, however, on the orbital side.
Pinning Position
GPS spoofing is a major issue for navigation and safety. Iridium’s constellation offers its own PNT signal, enabling an alternative means for confirming position, one that the companies already implement today to at least alert of likely interference issues. Desch notes that the Iridium signal is significantly stronger than GPS, making it harder to interfere with.
Warnings are already available using the Iridium system today, detecting a mismatch between the calculated Iridium PNT position and the GPS report from ADS-B. The companies want to improve the offering, including delivering more precise positioning details. Part of that plan means more payloads in orbit, transmitting the necessary signals to enable more precise data.
VHF Via Satellite
Iridium believes it can bring significant value to the industry by offering VHF radio communications during overwater operations. The effort would mimic Aireon’s ADS-B in space approach, adding transceivers to orbital payloads, extending the range beyond terrestrial towers.
Despite mentioning the VHF via Satellite concept in the press release, Iridium was careful to position that as a long-term concept more than a near-term product rollout. Desch acknowledged that, like the positioning efforts, the VHF program will require new payloads in orbit and that the merger “isn’t an announcement about that.” He is confident, however, that the deal effectively aligns R&D efforts from the companies. They can now combine their efforts rather than working separately towards the same goal.
That long-term horizon also accounts for the regulatory efforts needed. It is a safety services offering, not a commodity nor commercial service. That comes with additional reliability and regulatory considerations. Iridium has managed such efforts before. That knowledge
Satellites or Payloads
One interesting and repeated bit throughout the conversation with Desch and Thoma came from how the future on-orbit services were positioned. Iridium is very happy with performance of the current constellation, Desch shared. Between the active satellites and on-orbit spares, he is confident the network will be in service through 2035 and perhaps even longer. Even with the new services coming online, that could challenge the math around putting a new constellation into orbit. Especially when the new constellation is planned to be larger than the current 66 active satellites.
Desch frequently mentioned “payloads” in his responses to journalist questions, not satellites. Specific function payloads that will deliver these service improvements, and those might not require a dedicated full satellite to operate, again mimicking the way Aireon’s ADS-B service piggybacked on the more feature-rich Iridium NEXT satellites when developed a decade ago. Of course, that means finding a partner who can carry those payloads. Or developing a different architecture to get them into orbit more efficiently.
Hardly a certainty at this point, and the company is always careful to not spill too much. But the phrasing certainly caught my attention.
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Seth Miller has over a decade of experience covering the airline industry. With a strong focus on passenger experience, Seth also has deep knowledge of inflight connectivity and loyalty programs. He is widely respected as an unbiased commentator on the aviation industry.
He is frequently consulted on innovations in passenger experience by airlines and technology providers.
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