February 8, 2023 – SES, ThinKom and Hughes demonstrated revolutionary high-performance multi-orbit service capable of supporting multiple solutions for government airborne missions, the companies announced today. The open architecture ThinKom ThinAir Ka2517 airborne satcom terminal was successfully demonstrated over SES’s Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and Geostationary (GEO) satellite networks during testing at ThinKom’s Hawthorne, CA, facilities and on an aircraft in Mojave, CA. To enable roaming across the satellites, the architecture included the Hughes Network Systems software-defined ruggedized HM400 airborne modem. The testing validated the formal release of the latest ThinAir Ka2517 software, interfacing with the Hughes HM400 modem for MEO and GEO operations. The latest generation Ka2517 antenna is designed for full commercial Ka-band and mil-Ka band satellites operating over 17.7 – 21.2 GHz (forward link) and 27.5 – 31 GHz (return link), providing governments and the military with broad airborne communications capabilities.