Iridium NEXT Mission 1

14 January 2017 17:54

Return-to-flight mission after the loss of Amos-6 in September 2016. Iridium NEXT will replace the original Iridium constellation, launched in the late 1990s. Each Falcon mission will carry 10 satellites, with a goal to complete deployment of the 66 plus 9 spare satellite constellation by mid 2018. The first two Iridium qualification units were supposed to ride a Dnepr rocket in April 2016 but were delayed, so Iridium decided to qualify the first batch of 10 satellites instead.