Viasat’s ultra-high-capacity ViaSat-3 Flight 2 (VS-3 F2) satellite, built by Boeing, has completed its cross-country flight from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
VS-3 F2 was delivered to LAX by Boeing from its El Segundo, California, facility, before being transported in one of the world’s largest cargo airplanes, an Antonov AN-124, touching down in Florida in the early hours of September 30, 2025.
The satellite was safely and securely shipped in a specialized container that carefully controls environmental factors such as temperature and air cleanliness as required to protect the highly complex technology throughout the flight.
With precision down to the millimeter, loading the container onto an AN-124 cargo bay is an exceptionally intricate procedure that takes around four to six hours.
Now that VS-3 F2 has arrived at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the Boeing and Viasat teams, together with launch partner United Launch Alliance (ULA), are readying the spacecraft for launch in late October 2025, aboard a powerful ULA Atlas V 551 rocket.
VS-3 F2 is the second of three ViaSat-3 Ka-band satellites and is designed to provide more than double the bandwidth capacity of Viasat’s entire existing fleet. Upon anticipated service entry in early 2026, VS-3 F2 is expected to add more than 1 Tbps capacity to our network over the Americas.
VS-3 F2 will now undergo comprehensive testing to verify all systems are go for launch following transport. After this, the satellite will be secured to the Atlas V launch vehicle adapter, enclosed within the payload fairing, which protects it during the three minutes of atmospheric flight, and then mated (attached) to the rocket. From there, it will be put through final preparations ahead of launching VS-3 F2 into a GTO, from which the satellite will propel itself over the coming few months into GEO approximately 22,000 miles (36,000 km) above the Earth’s equator.
The Atlas V rocket, which stands 196 feet (59.7 meters) tall and will weigh 1.3 million pounds (587,000 kg) when fully fueled at liftoff, will be rolled out to Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station the day before launch.
I’m extremely proud of the Viasat team and our partnership with Boeing in successfully completing ViaSat-3 F2’s manufacture and testing. Being just a few weeks out from launch is incredibly exciting – this achievement represents the dedication and innovative spirit of hundreds of talented professionals who’ve lent their expertise to this mission. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to this milestone. Now we turn our focus to getting F2 into orbit, where its tailored capabilities are expected to enable us to better serve our customers and meet increasing demand for resilient, global satellite communications,” said Dave Abrahamian, Vice President of Space Systems, Viasat. “The VS-3 constellation represents an important part of our global, multi-orbit, multi-band network, adding capacity that is secure, reliable, and highly flexible: with dynamic-beam-forming capabilities designed to rapidly shift capacity to wherever demand is greatest.”
