[Satellite TODAY 08-22-11] Satellite operator ViaSat said it is in talks with the U.S. Department of Defense regarding a satellite upgrade to improve ISR capabilities on operations and confirmed that the Pentagon is “very interested to use ViaSat-1” for the project, according to a Sheppard report issued Aug. 19.

   In the report, ViaSat said the employment of the ViaSat-1 high-capacity satellite, which is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in September, would represent a significant amount of new business.

   “[The Pentagon deal] would change a lot of things. The Ka-band satellite has the capacity to serve the accelerating growth in bandwidth demand for multimedia Internet access over the next decade. ViaSat-1 would increase throughput of data from around 5GB to 140GB per second. It would provide more capability and costs would be no different.”

ViaSat also told Sheppard that the deal would result in a need to change techniques in order to get high throughput on the satellite and would require the use of a certain number of gateway communications relays. “We don’t think this will happen overnight but there some utility in that,” ViaSat said.