— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 28, 2023 SpaceX aborted another launch attempt April 28 at T-minus 59 seconds for reasons it did not disclose. With severe weather conditions forecast again for April 29, the mission was bumped to April 30. Long time coming The delays were part of a long-running series of setbacks for Viasat, which had originally planned to deploy the first of three ViaSat-3 satellites in 2019 — before being caught up in production and supply chain issues compounded by the pandemic. There were payload, satellite integration, and launch delays, Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg told SpaceNews in an interview, “but the single biggest contributor was COVID-19,” which also led to a shortage of skilled workers. Contact was established with ViaSat-3 Americas about 15 minutes after lift-off, Viasat announced, and the satellite will attempt to deploy its solar arrays over the coming days. Dankberg said it will take close to three weeks for ViaSat-3 Americas to reach its final GEO position at 88.9 degrees West, and then another two to three months to complete health checks ahead of entering commercial service. Viasat developed the payload for each ViaSat-3 internally and is using a chassis from Boeing based on the manufacturer’s 702 satellite platform. Each Viasat-3 is designed to provide more than 1,000 gigabits per second (Gbps) of capacity, roughly three times more than Viasat provides over the Americas with the ViaSat-2 satellite launched in 2017. The second ViaSat-3 is being designed for coverage over Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The third and final ViaSat-3 would cover Asia. Dankberg said the second ViaSat-3 is currently undergoing final integration and tests at Boeing’s facilities ahead of a launch this fall on an Atlas 5 from United Launch Alliance. “The third one is just about to be shipped to Boeing for integration,” he added, “and we expect that to launch a little over a year from now.” Viasat had a contract to launch its third ViaSat-3 on Ariane 6, Arianespace’s next-generation launch vehicle.