Galaxy 1 partners with Viasat to deliver rapid, scalable and secure communications for uncrewed aircraft

Viasat and Galaxy 1 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions have announced a part­ner­ship where both com­pa­nies will work togeth­er to enhance the deliv­ery of Velaris, Viasat’s ded­i­cat­ed satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice for Uncrewed Aer­i­al Vehi­cles (UAVs) and Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) air­craft.

Announced ear­li­er this week, Galaxy 1 will extend the reach and flex­i­bil­i­ty of Velaris’ ser­vice deliv­ery
through its Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ner-as-a-Ser­vice (DPaaS) mod­el. This sup­ports oper­a­tors with rapid deploy­ment, scal­able fleet man­age­ment and stream­line access to reli­able beyond-visu­al-line-of-sight (BVLOS) con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

Mar­tyn Dur­rant, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, Galaxy 1 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, said: “Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty rep­re­sents one of the most trans­for­ma­tive shifts in avi­a­tion, and con­nec­tiv­i­ty is at the heart of mak­ing it safe, effi­cient and scal­able.

“By part­ner­ing with Viasat, we are not only enabling oper­a­tors to onboard quick­ly, inte­grate seam­less­ly, and deliv­er resilient ser­vices, but also help­ing Viasat expand and strength­en its glob­al ecosys­tem of part­ners.

Rather than act­ing as a tra­di­tion­al dis­trib­u­tor, Galaxy 1 pro­vides a man­aged oper­a­tional lay­er that abstracts the com­plex­i­ty of pro­vi­sion­ing, billing, com­pli­ance over­sight and inte­gra­tion into a uni­fied frame­work. This enables UAV and AAM stake­hold­ers to tran­si­tion effi­cient­ly from proof- of-con­cept to com­mer­cial­ly scaled, reg­u­lat­ed deploy­ment.

Galaxy 1’s mul­ti-API inte­gra­tion lay­er con­nects flight plan­ning, track­ing and safe­ty tools, enabling seam­less SoS inter­op­er­abil­i­ty. These capa­bil­i­ties accel­er­ate the safe and scal­able adop­tion of uncrewed air­craft in con­trolled air­space while rein­forc­ing Galaxy 1’s role as an inte­gra­tion and enable­ment part­ner across the AAM sec­tor.

Galaxy 1 DPaaS for Viasat Velaris deliv­ers:

• Struc­tured path­ways for new ecosys­tem part­ners, enabling scal­a­bil­i­ty and extend­ing the reach of Viasat’s Part­ner Net­work
• Ensur­ing con­sis­tent, high-qual­i­ty ser­vice across regions through robust net­work deploy­ment and man­age­ment. Its advanced billing and pro­vi­sion­ing plat­form sup­ports a mul­ti-lay­ered part­ner ecosys­tem, enabling flex­i­ble com­mer­cial mod­els for oper­a­tors, ser­vice providers, and developers—while ensur­ing seam­less inte­gra­tion into the broad­er AAM frame­work
• Accel­er­at­ed onboard­ing of new appli­ca­tions and ser­vices into the AAM ecosys­tem, with seam­less orches­tra­tion between flight oper­a­tions sys­tems, IoT plat­forms, and Viasat’s Velaris ser­vices through APIs
• Com­pre­hen­sive mon­i­tor­ing, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, and resilience through Galaxy 1’s IBIS and Remote Ter­mi­nal Man­ag­er (RTM) plat­forms. These sys­tems pro­vide real-time ter­mi­nal vis­i­bil­i­ty, secure life­cy­cle man­age­ment, per­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing and com­pli­ance-ready reporting—capabilities increas­ing­ly essen­tial for reg­u­lat­ed BVLOS and con­trolled air­space oper­a­tions
  

Dur­rant added: “Through stream­lined pro­vi­sion­ing, faster appli­ca­tion inte­gra­tion, and man­aged ser­vice deliv­ery, we’re accel­er­at­ing the pace at which new ser­vices and appli­ca­tions can be deployed into the AAM sector—driving inno­va­tion, enhanc­ing oper­a­tional readi­ness, and unlock­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for oper­a­tors and ser­vice providers in this new era of flight.”

Viasat is devel­op­ing the ulti­mate glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work to pow­er high-qual­i­ty, reli­able, secure, afford­able, fast con­nec­tions to pos­i­tive­ly impact people’s lives any­where they are — on the ground, in the air or at sea, while build­ing a sus­tain­able future in space. In May 2023, Viasat com­plet­ed its acqui­si­tion of Inmarsat, com­bin­ing the teams, tech­nolo­gies and resources of the two com­pa­nies to cre­ate a new glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions part­ner.

Joel Kloost­er, SVP for Air­craft Oper­a­tions and Safe­ty at Viasat, said: “Velaris is already dri­ving the future of AAM. With Galaxy 1’s DPaaS, we’re accel­er­at­ing that future by pair­ing reli­able satel­lite con­nec­tiv­i­ty with a strong part­ner ecosys­tem and seam­less API inte­gra­tion.

“Col­lab­o­ra­tion is essen­tial to the growth of AAM. Work­ing with part­ners like Galaxy 1 helps strength­en how Velaris is deliv­ered and inte­grat­ed ensur­ing scal­a­bil­i­ty and effi­cien­cy in the indus­try.”