ATLAS Doubles Rwanda Mwulire Satellite Capacity With Second Antenna
Rwanda’s Mwulire ground station can handle two satellite contacts at once after a second antenna entered service on 18 September 2026; the antenna is owned by U.S. firm ATLAS Space Operations.
The antenna is hosted at the Rwanda Space Agency facility in Rwamagana District under an antenna-hosting agreement. It is the second dish installed there through the partnership. The first, which belongs to Rwanda, began operating in July 2025. With both antennas active, the site can support simultaneous passes instead of one at a time.
The new system is a 3.7-metre receive-only parabolic reflector on a dual-axis pedestal. It receives S-band signals between 2200 and 2300 MHz and supports both left- and right-hand circular polarization. Operators can book contacts through ATLAS’s Freedom software platform, so customers already on the company’s network do not need separate infrastructure to use the Rwandan site.
Mwulire sits about two degrees south of the equator at roughly 1,668 meters above sea level. This location gives the station a clear view of low-inclination satellites that higher-latitude ground stations often miss, and it improves contact opportunities for mid-inclination orbits. Spacecraft in those orbits can pass over an equatorial site several times a day, which matters for telemetry, command uploads and payload data from low-Earth-orbit missions.
During commissioning, the antenna completed more than 350 scheduled test contacts with a 100 percent success rate and no recorded error seconds, according to ATLAS. The company, a wholly owned subsidiary of York Space Systems since 2025, runs a federated network of more than 50 antennas in about 20 countries. Rwanda satellite contact capacity
ATLAS chief executive Kristin Rice said customers rely on reliable contacts. The second Mwulire antenna supplies more of them. She described the move from one antenna to two in a little over a year as a sign of demand for equatorial coverage and of the partnership with the Government of Rwanda through the Rwanda Space Agency.
Rwanda Space Agency chief executive Gaspard Twagirayezu said the addition strengthens the country’s ground infrastructure. It expands the capacity available to support space missions from Africa. The facility itself holds Tier 3 certification from the World Teleport Association, the first fully certified teleport of that standard in sub-Saharan Africa.
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