ICO North America announced last week that its 2 GHz mobile satellite service satellite had successfully completed its thermal vacuum test milestone. The satellite is under construction at Space Systems/Loral Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif.

Bob Day, ICO’s senior vice president of Space Systems, said “These tests are designed to verify the satellite performance under the various hot and cold temperature conditions which the satellite will encounter in orbit. The Loral team has done a great job and we are very pleased with the test.”

Space Systems/Loral’s executive program director for ICO, Greg Bossert, said, “The ICO satellite which employs an advanced MSS payload with Ground Based Beam Forming is now moving on to the vibration testing phase and final performance verification in preparation for our scheduled launch later this year.”

The satellite will be combined with terrestrial communication facilities and offer wireless voice, data, video and Internet services to portable and mobile devices. Some of the frequencies the system will use are in portions of the 2 GHz band formerly allocated for broadcast auxiliary service, including newsgathering.