[Satellite TODAY 05-19-11] ViaSat has won a new contract worth $40 million from Thales Alenia Space, the company announced May 17. ViaSat will supply Ka-band transmit-receive (T/R) modules to Thales Alenia Space for the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation.

     Thales Alenia Space is building the next set of 66 Iridium LEO satellites, and plans to integrate the T/R modules to build cross links between satellites and feeder links to earth terminals to facilitate point-to-point routing of data over the network.

Iridium NEXT is scheduled to begin launching in 2015. The new network will maintain the Iridium constellation architecture of 66 cross-linked LEO satellites covering 100 percent of the globe.