See the live interview from the 2026 Satellite conference
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In this week's episode of Space Minds, host Mike Gruss interviews Carmel Ortiz, senior vice president of medium-Earth-orbit constellation programs at SES. They discuss new technology to help satellites communicate and connect, and how SES is finding a competitive edge the evolving landscape of satellite communications.
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SpaceNews: If we were to talk 12 months from now, what kind of milestones would you hope to have seen accomplished; what does success look like for the rest of 2026?
Carmel Ortiz: We have the Pathfinder-1 launch next week*, and then we start preparing the payload for the Pathfinder-2, so there's a significant amount of work. And for part of that payload, we're making some of the components. We're starting our vertical integration process this year. ... Twelve years from now, we should see that Pathfinder-2 satellite, with our first instance of an SES payload, flying.
*Editor's note: This episode was recorded during the Satellite conference in March.
Watch the full episode here
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