Viasat Finished ViaSat-3 by Changing the Antenna That Broke the First One

Viasat finished its long-delayed ViaSat-3 broadband buildout only after abandoning the exact giant antenna design that crippled the first satellite. SpaceNews reported that a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launched ViaSat-3 F3 toward geostationary orbit on April 29, closing a program that was supposed to start service in 2019 but instead spent years slipping, breaking, and getting redesigned.

That makes this more than a rocket story. The loud part was Falcon Heavy returning after an 18-month hiatus, as NASASpaceFlight reported. The important part is that Viasat had to change the satellite's antenna architecture after ViaSat-3 F1 lost more than 90 percent of its planned capacity in a deployment failure, according to SpaceNews's earlier coverage.

F3 is not a carbon copy of the first two satellites. SpaceNews reported that F3 carries an antenna from L3Harris, not the large deployable reflector from Northrop Grumman used on F1 and F2. Viasat chairman Mark Dankberg told the publication the new antenna avoids the same "bloom" step, a tension-release deployment sequence implicated in F1's failure. "It's deployed under control the entire time," he said.

That is the real state of Viasat's so-called completed constellation. One satellite is crippled. A second, ViaSat-3 F2, had completed the main reflector bloom as of April 20 but was still weeks away from final deployments after eclipse-season delays, according to a Viasat investor release. F3 is headed for the Asia-Pacific region and is designed to add more than 1 terabit per second of throughput, the network's data-carrying capacity, before entering service in late summer 2026, also according to Viasat.

Viasat is also signaling that it does not want to build many more satellites like these. SpaceNews reported that after the F1 anomaly, the company scrapped plans for a ViaSat-4 and began moving away from giant deployable antennas and other large, expensive geostationary satellites. Viasat's fleet page says the three-satellite system was built to shift capacity dynamically across demand hotspots. Geostationary orbit means a satellite sits high enough above Earth to appear fixed over one region, which makes it useful for aviation, ships, and government links that want broad persistent coverage. It also means each failure is a very expensive way to learn a lesson.

That lesson matters because Starlink changed the satellite broadband market while Viasat was still trying to finish the old plan. Viasat originally aimed to start ViaSat-3 service in 2019, but SpaceNews reported that production delays, supply chain problems, and the pandemic pushed the first launch to 2023. After F1 failed, the company moved F2 from its planned Europe, Middle East, and Africa role to the Americas to help cover the gap, according to the same report.

So yes, Falcon Heavy flew again. Fine. But the more revealing fact is that Viasat reached the end of its terabit-class geostationary push by changing suppliers, changing deployment mechanics, and quietly backing away from the giant-reflector idea that was supposed to define the program. If F3 works, Viasat gets badly needed Asia-Pacific capacity for airlines, ships, and government customers. If it does not, the company will have spent a decade proving that one huge satellite can still fail one huge time.