Celeste IOD-1, developed by GMV and Alén Space under the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Celeste In-Orbit Demonstrator (IOD) program, was successfully launched on March 28 from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand. The two satellites – built respectively by GMV and Thales Alenia Space – were launched at 10:14 CET and separated from the launcher about an hour later. This marks the beginning of their early operations phase, during which mission control gets them ready for life in orbit.

Celeste is ESA’s strategic program to demonstrate the benefits of an additional low Earth orbit (LEO) navigation layer that complements Galileo and EGNOS, with the goal of improving the accuracy, resilience, and security of positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services in Europe. The in-orbit demonstrator (IOD) represents the program’s first phase and will validate key LEO-PNT technologies in flight ahead of potential future operational deployment.

The Celeste IOD phase is being carried out in parallel by two European consortia and will include a total of eleven satellites plus one in-orbit spare. As one of the prime contractors, GMV is responsible for the end-to-end mission for six of the demonstrator satellites, including system definition and design, the space and ground segments, the user segment, and operations.

GMV’s IOD-1 satellite, part of ESA Celeste mission, successfully launched from New Zealand | GeoConnexion