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DUBAI AIRSHOW 2023: Viasat, Bellwether Industries Expand Partnership “to Include Integration of Velaris Terminal and Test Flight Plans”

UK-based eVTOL start-up, Bell­wether Indus­tries, and glob­al satel­lite com­pa­ny, Viasat, announced at this week’s Dubai Air­show, a part­ner­ship using the Velaris con­nec­tiv­i­ty for the upcom­ing air­craft mod­el, Oryx, reports a press release. 

The release explains, “The two com­pa­nies are in the mid­dle of a two-phase test as part of Viasat’s Velaris Part­ner Net­work, with plans to include a test flight sched­ule at a com­mer­cial aero­drome lat­er in the pro­gram.”

The Velaris ser­vice pro­vides reli­able and secure satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions for com­mer­cial Urban Air Mobil­i­ty vehi­cles, such as Bellwether’s Oryx, to suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grate with air­craft in com­mer­cial air­space. The 0.6 lbs mul­ti-link ter­mi­nal installed on the vehi­cle “simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­nects to the Viasat net­work and LTE, enabling oper­a­tors to access a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions, such as real-time mon­i­tor­ing, to enable safe and secure air­space inte­gra­tion (includ­ing air traf­fic ser­vices and air traf­fic flow man­age­ment).”

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Vidyut Jacob, Senior Direc­tor of Mobil­i­ty and Strat­e­gy at Bell­wether Indus­tries, enthused, “We are tak­ing sol­id steps towards the impend­ing test phas­es for our Volar project. We are poised to exe­cute a two-step process with our part­ner Viasat and launch phase 1 in 2024, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with CATUAV Test Cen­tre (BCN Drone Cen­ter) in Spain.”

Joel Kloost­er, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Flight Safe­ty and Uncrewed Avi­a­tion, at Viasat, added, “By align­ing with part­ners who are at the fore­front of reshap­ing and advanc­ing the avi­a­tion indus­try, Viasat seeks not only to push the bound­aries of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion but also to con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the for­mu­la­tion of reg­u­la­to­ry norms and con­nec­tiv­i­ty pre­req­ui­sites that will guide the indus­try’s tra­jec­to­ry in the fore­see­able future.”

Back­ground

Bell­wether Indus­tries is based in Lon­don and was found­ed in 2019. After cre­at­ing ‘Volar’, the company’s core mis­sion is to bring Urban air Mobil­i­ty to people’s dai­ly lives. 

Volar is defined as a new cat­e­go­ry of pri­vate urban air­craft for intra-city trav­el. The com­pa­ny believes that peo­ple com­mut­ing in the sky is inevitable with­in the next 10 years and state, “A volar will be capa­ble to take any­one to fly any­time and any­where to any point in cities.” 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.bellwether-industries.com/

www.viasat.com

(Top Image: Oryx)

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