[12-06-07 – Satellite Today] Iridium Satellite has hired Lee Demitry to serve as the executive vice president for Iridium Next, the company’s second-generation satellite constellation, Iridium announced Dec. 6.
    Iridium unveiled plans in February to spend more than $2 billion to build and deploy a second-generation satellite constellation. Plans call for the 66-satellite system to be rolled out incrementally, with a portion of the cost funded through cash flow, which is about $60 million per year, and the remainder from capital markets and strategic partners.
    Demitry will lead the creation, development and implementation of the system as well as direct engineering efforts for the current satellite constellation.
    Demitry has spent 32 years working in the aerospace and satellite technology fields. Most recently he served as vice president of engineering for satellite imagery company GeoEye.