AQST wins US$240m supply deal for VHTS satellites

​- breakthrough deal delivers AQST’s fully electric Quantum 1000 platform

AQST Canada Inc., announced the signing of the memorandum of agreement for the supply of three (3) Ultra High Throughput Small Satellites. The total value for three satellites for the customer is over 240 million USD.

Under the scope of the agreement, AQST Canada will act as the primary contractor responsible for delivering the Very High Throughput (VHTS) Geostationary Earth Orbit satellites based on its fully electric platform, Quantum 1000.

Two of the satellites will leverage optical satellite communications systems to deliver more than 250Gbps of capacity from GEO. The third satellite is equipped with a Ka-band communications platform to deliver 60Gbps+ of capacity.

As part of its solution, AQST will also be developing primary and backup optical ground control centers, the telecommand and telemetry stations, and the ground mission segment linked to the fully processed payload. Also, Once deployed, the satellites will form part of the digital infrastructure across various geographical areas, including EMA, MENA, and ASIA.

“We are honored and grateful to our partners and customers in depositing their confidence in the highly skilled and experienced AQST team to develop for these next generation satellites. These solutions represent the world’s first Optical Communication satellite platforms designed to deliver unprecedented throughput to support the digital requirements of our customer,” declared Arnaldo Soto and Ramon Caldas, founders of AQST. “Those new satellites will take advantage of all the expertise developed by AQST Canada Inc. and our Quantum(R) platforms; as well as on its VHTS payloads including work done in the development of Optical payloads.”

"In AQST Canada Inc, we are very proud, honored and grateful for the trust put in us by our client, and we look forward to working closely together to realize our goal of accelerating equal and affordable access to communication and connectivity in our communities,” added Gurvinder Chohan, Group President AQST Canada and Chief Marketing officer AQST Space LLC.

Backed by this milestone agreement, AQST Canada pledges to further explore the opportunities promised by the Small Satellite market for in-orbit demonstration of Optical Communications.