SES announced that its latest pair of O3b mPOWER satellites was successfully launched into space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States, at 5:26 pm local time. Both satellites will join the first six O3b mPOWER spacecraft already operating at medium Earth orbit (MEO), adding incremental capacity to the initial O3b mPOWER constellation.

The seventh and eighth O3b mPOWER satellites feature redesigned payload power modules, which will bolster SES’s second-generation MEO system's ability to continue delivering high throughput and predictable low latency services at scale.

SES has been deploying O3b mPOWER services worldwide since April 2024 delivering high-performance network services to customer sites across Asia-Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas in multiple market segments. The system’s exceptional flexibility means it can provide services ranging from tens of Mbps to multiple gigabits per second of capacity to any site. Key O3b mPOWER customers include Microsoft, Princess Cruises, Marlink, Jio Platforms, Orange, Claro Brasil, Vodafone Cook Islands, CNT Ecuador, NATO Support and Procurement Agency, and the Governments of Luxembourg and the United States.

“O3b mPOWER is our most powerful, technically advanced, flexible satellite constellation in space. As we increase the number of satellites in our constellation, we also exponentially increase the capacity and efficiency of our network. Since the start of the service of O3b mPOWER earlier this year, we have seen how it has become an integral part of the connectivity experience of our customers. We have also learned a lot and have put all of those insights to work as we progress in our innovation journey to scale up our services and meet even the most sophisticated requirements of our customers,” said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES.

The O3b mPOWER system comprises an initial constellation of 13 high-throughput and low-latency satellites as well as extensive ground infrastructure. The remaining five O3b mPOWER satellites are currently being manufactured and are scheduled for launch over the next 18 months.

Click here to know more about SES' O3b mPOWER MEO Satellite Systems