Rivada Space Networks, the would-be constellation operator of 288 yet-to-be-built satellites, is in deep trouble.
Rivada’s litany of problems continues to mount. Not only is the company late in stumping up the small matter of $2.4 billion (€2.1 billion) needed to build its ‘OuterNet’ constellation, Rivada now faces another major hurdle from its licensing authority, the tiny European state of Liechtenstein, which has allocated Rivada its operating license (for a fee of €6 million per annum).
On September 27th, Liechtenstein Vaterland, a newspaper in the country, described the Rivada project as being “on the brink.” It cites the challenges of building and launching 288 satellites by mid-2026 as being especially difficult, even if the funding was available immediately.
The newspaper reported that officials are considering reassigning the Rivada operating license given that the ITU timings for launching the fleet are now extremely close. Failure to meet the ITU deadline would render the license near-worthless.
The Liechtenstein filing with the ITU goes back to 2015 (as 3ECOM1-3) and called for 24 satellites in each of 12 orbital planes, or 264 satellites in total using Ku- and Ka-band. These 264, plus orbital spares, makes up the total 288 constellation.
Rivada is already in the ITU’s debt given that, in July of 2023, the ITU granted it a waiver and no longer requiring Rivada to put 10 per cent of its constellation into orbit in 2023 – a then impossible task. But clearly the ITU trusted that Rivada would get the $2.4 billion funding in place and start building satellites. Rivada gave the satellite build contract to Terran Orbital.
Rivada, under the terms of the ITU rules must put 144 satellites (half the constellation) into orbit by June 2026, and the other 144 a few weeks later by September 2026.
In July last year, Dr. Rainer Schnepfleitner, Director of the AK (Amt für Kommunikation) of Liechtenstein,, said, “The [Liechtenstein] Office for Communications has put its trust in the ITU process and is delighted about the positive decision of the Radio Regulations Board. These filings were secured at a very early stage in the development of Non-GSO constellations for global connectivity and are an important asset – not only for Liechtenstein. A shortage of launch capacity and delays in technology development have been significant challenges to overcome in order to deploy these constellations in the stipulated timeframe. The perseverance of Rivada and ITU’s positive decision mean that the deployment of the constellations can move forward for the benefit of all the stakeholders.”
Indeed, although not mentioned by the newspaper, there could be many interested parties in the Rivada license, not the least of which could be SpaceX, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Telesat of Canada or others. Each would still have to meet the ITU’s obligatory mid-2026 completion date (or obtain a permitted delay).
However, the fallout from a Rivada collapse would be significant. Financial regulators on both sides of the Atlantic would be concerned, as would the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. Much the same applies to Terran Orbital.
The complaints from investors in Terran – now in the process of being acquired by Lockheed Martin – allege deliberate misinformation from Terran’s senior executives as to the company’s financial position. As one observer summed up the situation on September 28th, and stated, “[Terran CEO] Marc Bell would go from investor conference to investor conference (Jeffries, Gabelli, Schwab, Sidoti) claiming to have ‘real revenues and real backlog’ 90 percent of backlog was a mirage sold to investors.”
