"We've deployed 41 Iridium satellites from three countries, using eight launches, in as many months," said Durrell Hillis, vice president for Motorola's Space and Systems Technology Group (SSTG).

According to Motorolla, since the first launch of five Iridium satellites in May this year, the Iridium program has accounted for 16% of worldwide launches and 42% of all satellites launched in this time.

This highlights the growing importance of the telecommunication satellite constellations now being put up by at least five consortiums led by the Iridium, ICO and Teledesic satellite networks.

"We'll be launching another five Iridium satellites in 1997, and are well on our way to complete deployment of the Iridium constellation by mid-year 1998, leading to commercial service in September 1998,'' said Bary Bertiger, corporate vice president for Motorola's Satellite Communications Group.

Motorola revolutionized the satellite manufacturing process when it began designing satellites for the Iridium system. Its production factory in California was designed specifically for the Iridium program, as were its new satellite manufacturing techniques that enable production of a single Iridium satellite in less than 25 days.

This has been largely made possible by a revolution in space engineering which has seen new electronics enter commercial space use much faster than in the 1970s. At that time the electronics had to be proven to a degree of reliability that would make an engineer feel comfortable when using a specific device on a $500 million Intelsat satellite.

But with total costs for a typical low earth orbit telecom satellite plummeting to less than $50 million today, greater technology risks become possible as failure is not as costly and backups can be kept in orbit.

Three Motorola engineers conceived the Iridium system in 198 as a satellite, digital communications system of 66 Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites that would provide worldwide voice, data, fax, and paging capability using hand-held phones and pagers linked to the constellation of satellites.

Iridium has a further seven launches planned to complete the initial deployment of the 66-satellite Iridium constellation and its six spares. It is expected to be the first of such systems to market when commercial services begin in late 1998.