Credit: Swissto12
LA PLATA, Maryland — The undisclosed customer for small-GEO satellite manufacturer Swissto12’s 7th satellite is Viasat Inc., which already has three Swissto12 HummingSat’s on order as a result of Viasat’s purchase of Inmarsat.
Swissto12 had said in February and March that it was building seven satellites, with the last one for an undisclosed customer.
In response to Space Intel Report inquiries, Viasat on May 29 confirmed the contract expansion:
“The I-8 F4 satellite was added to our satellite roadmap in Q3FY26 [which ended Dec. 31, 2025]. The I-8 satellite fleet, which is part of Viasat’s commitment to modernize global L-band services, will have common design elements and characteristics. We will share further updates and information related to the I-8 fleet as things progress.”
The Inmarsat purchase, in May 2023, forecasted a late 2026 launch of the satellites, with the assumption that Swissto12’s first satellite, ordered by Intelsat and now part of SES’s fleet following SES’s purchase of Intelsat. The SES I-45, originally scheduled to launch in early 2026, has slipped to 2027.
Viasat has said its three HummingSats would launch in 2028. With the addition of the fourth satellite, the company recently removed that date and said the launch dates would be announced later. The company had planned to place the three HummingSats in a stacked configuration on a single rocket, likely the SpaceX Falcon 9.
In addition refreshing the Viasat L-band network, at least one of the Swissto12 satellites will carry navigation transponders as part of the space-based augmentation that verifies GPS signals. Inmarsat had flown these payloads on earlier generations of its satellites for both the US and European augmentation networks.
In late May 2023, just before its purchase by Viasat closed, Inmarsat announced a 20-year contract valued at 187.3 million Australian dollars ($134.5 million) to provide Australia and New Zealand to use one of the Swissto12 satellites for the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network, SouthPAN.
Swissto12 has said that it expected to report more than $200 million in revenue in 2026, compared to $140 million in 2025, and to be EBITDA-positive.
Shown here is Swissto12’s HummingSat platform and the HPS-GmbH antenna to be fitted onto Astrum Mobile’s Neastar-1 direct-to-device satellite. Credit: Swissto12
The company’s other customers are Space Compass of Japan, building a GEO-orbit optical data-relay service; and Astrum Mobile of Singapore and the Philippines, which will use the satellite for a direct-to-device service employing a deployable mesh antenna under construction by HPS GmbH of Germany, which has received European Space Agency (ESA) funding to develop a European mesh antenna provider to compete with L3 Harris Technologies and Northrop Grumman Astro Aerospace.