SpaceX notches first orbital launch of 2025 with mission for UAE-based Space42

Update 9:21 p.m. EST (0221 UTC): SpaceX confirms successful deployment of the Thuraya 4-NGS.

SpaceX kicked off the year of orbital launches around the globe when it completed its first Falcon 9 flight of 2025. Onboard was a telecommunications satellite designed to serve regions in Africa, Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Liftoff of the Thuraya 4-NGS (Next Generation System) mission from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened on Friday, Jan. 3 at 8:27 p.m. EST (0127 UTC), the opening of a four-hour launch window.

Coming into the launch opportunity, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a sliding scale of favorable weather during the launch window. Meteorologists predict a 95 percent chance of good launch conditions at the opening of the window, but note that they deteriorate to 80 percent favorable later in the window.

Launch weather officers wrote in their forecast that the primary concerns are liftoff winds. They add that the booster recovery weather also starts as a low risk, but increases to a moderate risk by the end of the window.

“A cool, dry air mass in place over Florida as an area of high pressure settles in over the southeastern US. Tomorrow, a reinforcing shot of cold and dry air will move into the area as a dry cold front,” meteorologists wrote on Thursday. “Behind this front, winds will shift northwesterly and increase as the night progresses. Because of this, the only concern is low-level winds approaching constraints, with the risk increasing towards the end of the launch window.”

The Falcon 9 first stage booster for this mission, tail number B1073 in the SpaceX fleet, launched for a 20th time. It previously supported the CRS-27 mission to the International Space Station, ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1, Bandwagon-1 and 13 batches of Starlink satellites.

Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1073 landed on the SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This marked the 92nd booster landing for ASOG and the 391st booster landing for SpaceX to date.

Deployment of Thuraya 4 confirmed pic.twitter.com/u8Svi3B9yt

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 4, 2025

Boosting connectivity

The Thuraya 4-NGS satellite was launched on behalf of Space42, a company formed through the merger of the United Arab Emirates’ primary satellite provider, Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (Yahsat), and an AI-powered geospatial solutions company, Bayanat.

The newly-formed Space42 maintains two business units: Yahsat Space Services and Bayanat Smart Solutions. It made its debut on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange under the “SPACE42” ticker on Oct. 1, 2024.

Space42 currently operates two geostationary satellites: Thuraya 1 (launched Oct. 21, 2001) at 98.5 degrees East and Thuraya 2 (launched June 10, 2003) at 44 degrees East (Thuraya 2). These provide coverage to land-based, marine and aviation customers in Africa, Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Thuraya 3 was launched on Jan. 15, 2008, by the former multinational company, Sea Launch, to the 98.5 degrees East position and was designed to provide L-band mobile satellite services mainly for South and East Asia and the Pacific region, according to financial filings from Yahsat.

But according to those filings from Yahsat, on April 15, 2024, the satellite “suffered an unexpected payload anomaly causing an ongoing service outage.”

“Following implementation of standard incident management procedures, investigation of the incident in conjunction with the satellite manufacturer and exhaustion of most recovery options, [Yahsat] expects services to remain significantly diminished for a prolonged period in a majority of the geographies affected,” Yahsat wrote in its filing.

A Q3 filing for Space42 noted a reduction in revenue from $323 million down to $298 million (a loss of eight percent) as a result of the Thuraya 3 service loss.

The first three Thuraya satellites were built by Boeing and had an expected lifespan of 12 years. However, the first two satellites launched in 2000 and 2004 are still in operation.

Thuraya 4-NGS was built by Airbus, which delivered the satellite to Florida in late November after making the transatlantic flight onboard an Airbus BelugaST plane. The company was tapped to built the satellite in 2020 by Yahsat.

“Thuraya 4 is at the core of our next-generation mobility solutions plans and demonstrates our commitment to harnessing advanced SpaceTech to unlock innovative AI-powered services for our global client base,” said Ali Al Hashemi, CEO of Yahsat Space Services in a statement. “Thuraya 4 will significantly expand our product offerings with more than 15 new products when it becomes fully operational.”

The satellite is built on Airbus’ Eurostar Neo Platform and features a 12-meter (39.4 ft) antenna, which operates in L-band. Airbus said it will “provide advanced routing flexibility of up to 3,200 channels with dynamic power allocation over a large number of spot beams.”

Yahsat selected SpaceX to launch Thuraya 4 in September 2021. Originally, the satellite was supposed to launch in the second half of 2023 to begin operational service in 2024.