Boeing has delivered the final three satellites that will complete SES’s O3b mPOWER constellation. The satellites are set for launch later this month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission.
Satellites F11, F12, and F13 will add incremental capacity to strengthen performance and resilience of SES’s current 10-satellite constellation. O3b mPOWER serves mobility, government, enterprise and cloud customers.
The satellites are expected to enter service in mid-2027.
The satellites are built on Boeing’s 702X spacecraft platform with software-defined payloads, which also supports some of the U.S. Space Force’s Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellites.
“The delivery of these final three satellites allows us to ramp up our constellation’s capabilities to meet growing commercial and government demand,” commented Xavier Bertran, chief product and innovation officer of SES. “The performance we are seeing from the 10 satellites already on orbit validates this architecture. The completion of the O3b mPOWER system reinforces our proven leadership in MEO while advancing our innovation roadmap.”
O3b mPOWER began delivering service in 2024 and the most recent two satellites entered service in March of this year.
The first four satellites in the constellation had issues with onboard power modules, which led SES and Boeing to upgrade satellites seven through 11 and add satellites 12 and 13. In SES’s latest financial update in late July, CFO Lisa Pataki said the operator collected $15 million on the insurance claim for the satellites in the second quarter, with the insurance claim totaling $218 million to date.
SES’s next-generation MEO investment is called the “meoSphere” which SES has described as a network-of-networks concept combining existing assets, the IRIS² constellation, and next-generation satellite in a software-defined, flexible platform. Earlier this week, SES ordered 18 MEO satellites from German manufacturer OHB for its MEO contribution to the IRIS² program.
