On January 16, Aireon LLC (Aireon) announced that in December 2018 it entered into a $200m credit facility agreement with a group of independent investor funds, led by Deutsche Bank as sole structuring bank and underwriter. Aireon intends to use the proceeds from the credit facility to fund payments to Iridium Communications Inc. (Iridium) relating to the integration, launch and hosting of Aireon℠ payloads on the Iridium NEXT constellation, as well as capital and operational expenditures and other costs incurred by the company as it commences and expands provision of services. To date, Aireon has paid $43m of a total of $200m in hosting fees owed to Iridium, including $35m enabled by the credit facility. Aireon expects its system to be operational beginning in the first quarter of 2019; once live, the Aireon system will enable global, real-time aircraft surveillance, serving Air Navigation Service Providers worldwide.
Read more related news in Space Business Review January 2019.
