Gene Curcio, a California-based telecommunications entrepreneur who is leading the $50 million (52.47) bid of Venture Partners. to acquire the assets of the failed Iridium LLC satellite constellation, said he was pleased with Wednesday s proceedings and the order issued by US Bankruptcy Court Judge Cornelius Blackshear.

The judge ordered a June 21 status conference to review the two competing offers for Iridium assets by Venture Partners and Castle Harlan, a venture capital firm. The judge also acknowledged that the no-strings-attached Venture Partners bid would be preferred if it could produce the money needed to match the non-binding $50 million offer for the Iridium assets from Castle Harlan, Curcio said.

“We’re happy about what happened yesterday [Wednesday], Curcio told Interspace’s sister title Satellite News. “We’re excited about partnering with General Dynamics “

Venture Partners’ bid calls for General Dynamics to replace Motorola as the operator of the Iridium constellation. Iridium’s service would be revamped to provide voice communications to third world countries, data bursts and meter reading for utilities.

Curcio’s proposal also includes a deal with Hughes Global Space to provide communications to the U.S. government, military and for other users such as Nato, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation.

Neil Forrest, a partner with Freeman Forrest & Levy who is representing Venture Partners in the Iridium proceedings, said July 21 is the date that Castle Harlan is scheduled to complete its due diligence. The Venture Partners bid is superior to the Castle Harlan proposal in many ways, including the absence of a break-up fee, due diligence or further delays, Forrest said.

“The judge made it pretty clear that, in light of the conditional nature of the Castle Harlan bid, if we can satisfy the court and the other parties, we could close the deal for the $50 million before the Castle Harlan due diligence would be completed,” Forrest said.

Motorola has set a June 30 deadline for bidders to emerge and begin paying to operate the 66-satellite constellation. The company would start to de-orbit the $5 billion-plus system July 1.

Unclear is whether Motorola will give Castle Harlan the full 45 days it requested until July 21 to complete its due diligence. If the Castle Harlan business plan is not viable, no obligation exists to proceed with an acquisition. Telecommunications pioneer Craig McCaw had a similar option to acquire Iridium’s assets earlier this year, but he declined to proceed and chose to bail out rival ICO Global Communications instead.