Additional launch capacity allows Astranis to continue to build out high-orbit infrastructure to serve commercial and government demand

Astranis announced it has upgraded its 4th launch to a dedicated mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set to launch in 2028, allowing it to carry all of the “Block 4” production run of Astranis MicroGEO satellites.

The mission will carry six MicroGEO satellites, placed directly into GEO via direct-inject using an Impulse Helios upper stage. These new satellites expand Astranis’ capacity to serve commercial and government customers around the world. The launch will bring Astranis’ total fleet size to 16, adding to the 10 satellites built across Blocks 1, 2, and 3. Astranis has already signed a number of initial customers for Block 4, to be announced at a later date. This is an amendment to an initial contract Astranis signed with SpaceX in late 2024 that gives Astranis the full payload capacity on the mission.

Securing launches for multi-satellite blocks is a core benefit of Astranis’ responsive business model and provides the capacity needed to support the increased demand for dedicated space infrastructure.

Governments and enterprises around the world are increasingly seeking dedicated space infrastructure for communications and other missions such as space domain awareness that they can fully control, rather than relying on shared capacity. Higher orbits like GEO are uniquely suited for this requirement.

“We’ve only just begun to ramp up production to meet the demand we are seeing for commercial and national security missions,” said John Gedmark, CEO and co-founder of Astranis. “This launch means we can accelerate the critical infrastructure we’re building for customers in GEO and other higher orbits.”

This contract marks another step in Astranis’ continued expansion of high-orbit infrastructure and follows the recent introduction of Perceptor, which extends the company’s reach beyond communications into space domain awareness and maneuverability for commercial and national security missions. Astranis first proved that high-performance GEO satellites could be built faster and at scale. The company is now developing broader high-orbit platforms to connect, safeguard, and sustain critical infrastructure in GEO.