To say the universe is a complicated place is an understatement. For those of us less cosmically enlightened, just understanding our galaxy is hard enough.
The Milky Way alone contains an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars and is a hundred thousand light-years side to side. Where you’re reading this from now, is roughly 25 to 30 thousand light years from Galactic Central Point, and you’re currently orbiting the sun (whether you want to or not) at 19 miles a second.
Trying to grasp that is no mean feat, so spare a thought this holiday season for all those pushing their white and grey matter to ‘the max’, dealing with the decisions, revisions and equations involved in flying satellites.
And if you can dig a little deeper, to find just a little more festive charity in your heart, then spare an extra thought for the Inmarsat Spacecraft Engineers. They now have an extra orbiting babe to care for – GX5 – the latest transformation for the Global Xpress network.
In fact, things look even busier for our Spacecraft Engineers in the future, with seven new satellites to be launched in the next four years.
It might warm the cockles of your heart to know that their relentless devotion has huge benefits for Satcom Direct and Inmarsat. These new satellites will introduce an unprecedented wealth of new capabilities to our market and allow SD an even stronger platform to deliver the full range of services.
With focused, ultra-high-power capacity layered over high demand flight routes during peak hours, we believe that the satellites will revolutionise business aviation connectivity.
What’s more, Inmarsat is launching two multi-beam, high-throughput payloads – GX10A & 10B – that will be placed in Highly Elliptical Orbits (HEO), ensuring continuous coverage and featuring the ability to direct capacity above 65° North.
And we have been sure to synchronize the satellites’ capability with even more exciting terminals, ensuring that both existing and new customers will reap the benefits from this latest extension to our GX network.
It’s hugely exciting that we can immediately relocate capacity in line with real-time flight patterns and seasonal demand surges across the globe. But our customers understand that it isn’t enough to promise just a speedy connection.
And this is where our 40 years of experience makes a big difference, as does the fact that we have built our network from the ground up and end-to-end, to deliver a reliable, consistent experience. So, you can rest your head in peace this Christmas, knowing that Inmarsat has got the future technology roadmap covered.