Globalstar has received the final authorisation required to activate its second generation constellation in North America. Laurent Wauquiez, the French Minister in charge of Space Operations, gave the satellite operator the green light on 29 August and…
Globalstar has received the final authorisation required to activate its second generation constellation in North America. Laurent Wauquiez, the French Minister in charge of Space Operations, gave the satellite operator the green light on 29 August and the Ministry has subsequently commenced the process of registering the constellation with the United Nations.
The French authorisation was timely as under the terms of its Coface-backed US$586.3m senior secured credit facility, Globalstar was obliged to register the 2nd generation constellation with the UN by 31 August. If it failed to do so it would constitute a default under the loan’s covenants.
Back in March 2011, the International Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted Globalstar conditional authority to operate its second-generation satellites within the United States pending the completion of the French authorisation process.
Having received this, Globalstar will now activate its ground stations in North America to begin sending and receiving call traffic with the second-generation satellites.
Globalstar has so far launched twelve of the initial 24 satellite constellation. The first batch of six was launched back in October 2010 with second batch launched in July 2011. The launch of the second batch was delayed from May to July after one of the first six satellites suffered an anomaly to its momentum wheel in April. This prompted the constellation’s manufacturer Thales Alenia Space to perform additional checks and adjustments on the momentum wheels of the second batch.
Globalstar has since taken that satellite out of service after a further momentum wheel failed, while a second satellite from the first batch has suffered a similar problem and is operating on a spare momentum wheel. So far the second batch of satellites has shown no similar issue with the momentum wheels.
A further batch of six satellites has been delivered to the Baikonour Cosmodrome and is due to be launched in early October and Globalstar aims to launch the remaining satellites by the end of the year.
