SES-5 to provide capacity to Africa
Satellite operator SES S.A. has announced that the SES-5 satellite has successfully launched on board an ILS Proton Breeze, and will provide fresh capacity to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
The SES-5 is the group’s 51st spacecraft in orbit.
“This new EGNOS launch demonstrates the Commission’s commitment to providing positioning signals with the highest possible accuracy to citizens and businesses in Europe. This opens up a multitude of business opportunities, today and in the future, especially when EGNOS will start working with Galileo when Galileo becomes operational in 2014,” SES said.
The SES-5 satellite was designed and built for SES by Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), a leading manufacturer of commercial satellites. The spacecraft, to be positioned at the orbital slot of 5 degrees East, features 36 active Ku-band transponders and up to 24 active C-band transponders.
SES-5 has two Ku-band beams, one serving customers in the Nordic and Baltic countries and one serving Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as two C-band beams, one with global coverage and one with hemispheric coverage over Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The satellite provides Ka-band uplink capability, allowing for flexible operations between Europe and Africa.
SES-5 is designed to deliver high performance and extensive coverage for Direct-to-Home (DTH) services, broadband, maritime communications, GSM backhaul, and VSAT applications in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
SES-5 also features the L-band payload for the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). The EGNOS payload, which was developed for the European Commission (EC), will help verify, improve, and report on the reliability and accuracy of navigation positioning signals in Europe.
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