The commercial infrastructure required to deliver, manage, and scale satellite communications for uncrewed aircraft systems and advanced air mobility has taken a significant step forward. Galaxy 1 Communications and Viasat have officially announced a major new agreement designed to expand commercial support for Viasat’s Velaris satellite communications platform. The landmark agreement is the culmination of two years of intensive joint development, technical integration, and rigorous testing between the two companies.
Under the terms of the newly announced agreement, the companies will transition their jointly developed service platform directly into full commercial production. The overarching objective of this strategic move is to make satellite connectivity substantially easier to deploy, monitor, and manage across a rapidly expanding range of uncrewed aircraft operations. As the commercial drone sector continues to mature, industry stakeholders have increasingly recognized that robust hardware and network coverage alone are not enough to sustain widespread operations.
The agreement, officially announced on November 2, 2026, zeroes in on the critical administrative, financial, and operational systems needed to support commercial services at genuine scale. These essential backend components encompass streamlined customer onboarding, automated billing, sophisticated network management tools, and seamless integration with a wide variety of third-party software applications. By addressing these foundational requirements, Galaxy 1 and Viasat are tackling one of the most persistent bottlenecks facing the modern aviation and drone technology sectors.
Supporting Satellite Connectivity for Drone Operations
Viasat’s Velaris platform has established itself as a premier provider of specialized satellite communications services tailored specifically for autonomous aircraft, uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), and advanced air mobility (AAM) applications. The platform leverages Viasat’s robust L-band satellite network to deliver reliable, persistent connectivity for aircraft operating across a diverse array of challenging environments and operational scenarios.
The potential use cases and commercial applications for this technology are vast and transformative. They include time-sensitive drone delivery services, critical medical logistics and supply transport, emergency response operations for first responders, comprehensive industrial infrastructure inspections, and the burgeoning sector of future passenger air taxi services. In many of these critical sectors, reliable communications are an absolute prerequisite for regulatory approval and safe operational execution.
Satellite connectivity can play a vital, irreplaceable role in operations where traditional terrestrial cellular networks suffer from limited coverage, signal degradation, or complete blackouts. Furthermore, it provides an invaluable primary or secondary communications option for commercial aircraft operating across large, remote, or sparsely populated geographic regions. However, successfully expanding satellite-enabled drone services requires far more than basic communications coverage overhead.
Drone operators and commercial service providers also require sophisticated enterprise-grade systems to activate hardware equipment, actively monitor live connections, manage growing customer accounts, and rapidly resolve service interruptions when they occur. The partnership between Viasat and Galaxy 1 directly addresses these complex operational and commercial requirements, bridging the gap between raw technological capability and everyday commercial viability.
Moving From Development to Commercial Production
Under the terms of the newly formalized agreement, Galaxy 1 will take full responsibility for providing the comprehensive systems that underpin the commercial delivery of Velaris services to the global market. The company’s extensive operational responsibilities include managing the complete lifecycle of customer onboarding, streamlined service activation, accurate billing systems, and detailed reporting frameworks.
In addition to financial and administrative workflows, Galaxy 1 will supply the underlying network infrastructure and remote terminal management through its proprietary RTM platform. This advanced platform will empower service providers to continuously monitor and configure connected aviation hardware, manage operational incidents in real time, and swiftly restore network services whenever technical anomalies or connection problems occur.
To ensure flexibility and ease of adoption, application programming interfaces (APIs) will also be implemented to support seamless integration with third-party drone applications and partner management systems. This forward-thinking approach is explicitly designed to reduce the administrative and technical workload required for service providers to onboard new customers and launch new aviation services.
Martyn Durrant, Chief Commercial Officer at Galaxy 1 Communications, emphasized the strategic importance of this transition in a statement regarding the announcement.
"Moving into production is an important milestone and a strong validation of the platform we have developed with Viasat over the past two years," Durrant stated. "Our objective was never simply to provide satellite connectivity, but to establish the operational and commercial infrastructure needed to support a scalable UAV and Advanced Air Mobility ecosystem. This agreement demonstrates the value of that approach and provides an exciting foundation for the next phase of growth."
Building a Commercial Ecosystem for Advanced Aviation
The new agreement reflects a much broader, systemic challenge currently facing the entire commercial drone industry: the complex transition from isolated technology demonstrations and proof-of-concept trials to standardized services capable of supporting thousands of concurrent operators and aircraft safely.
Viasat’s expansive Velaris ecosystem comprises a diverse coalition of aircraft manufacturers, commercial operators, communications service providers, and specialized technology partners. As this collaborative network continues to grow in size and geographical scope, both companies aim to offer a unified, common framework for delivering and managing high-performance, satellite-enabled services without friction.
Sandeep Moorthy, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Advanced NTN Solutions, New Ventures at Viasat, highlighted the collaborative nature of the initiative and its impact on the wider industry landscape.
"Viasat is at the center of a growing ecosystem that is helping shape the future of next-generation uncrewed connectivity services," Moorthy said. "As Velaris expands, partners need scalable frameworks to deploy, manage, and scale efficiently. This collaboration is an important part of that capability, strengthening the partner network and accelerating services worldwide."
The announcement marks a decisive, operational shift from testing the joint platform in controlled environments to directly supporting large-scale commercial service delivery worldwide. While the initial announcement does not identify specific new aircraft deployments, individual customer contracts, or rigid service launch dates, it lays the groundwork for future commercial expansion.
For the wider commercial drone industry, the agreement underscores the rapidly growing importance of the invisible infrastructure that supports connected aircraft behind the scenes. While reliable communications hardware and satellite bandwidth remain absolute essentials for flight operations, true commercial growth ultimately depends on enterprise systems that make those sophisticated services significantly easier to operate, bill, and manage. By significantly expanding the commercial support and backend infrastructure available through the Velaris platform, Viasat and Galaxy 1 are positioning their partners to bring advanced, satellite-enabled drone services to the global market at an unprecedented scale.
