Vireo Ka 288

Vireo is CesiumAstro’s flagship multi-beam active phased array communications payload family, built for high-throughput satellite constellations. The Vireo Ka 288 variant is a flight-qualified, TRL 8 Ka-band payload designed for SDA Tranche-class proliferated LEO architectures, combining separate transmit and receive active electronically scanned array antennas with a Reconfigurable Processing Unit that handles Ka-band routing and signal processing. Using next-generation AESA technology, Vireo creates multiple steerable, shapable beams with electronic beam steering and dynamic per-beam power allocation, enabling near-instantaneous beam-hopping to share and focus capacity across the field of view. It supports up to 4 transmit and 4 receive channels with switchable RHCP/LHCP polarization and DVB-S2X waveform. Primary applications include high-rate data downlink and telemetry, tracking and control. The payload targets prime integrators and government/defense programs building cost-effective, scalable Ka-band constellations, notably the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Flight heritage includes selection to provide payloads to Raytheon Technologies for SDA’s Tranche 1 Tracking Layer and current shipment of flight-qualified hardware to Rocket Lab for SDA’s Tranche 2 Transport Layer constellation.