SES S.A. has announced that the SES-5 satellite roared into space on board an ILS Proton Breeze M booster on 9 July at 00h38 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. After a nine-hour, 12-minute mission, the Breeze M upper stage of the Proton rocket successfully released the SES-5 satellite directly into geostationary transfer orbit.
The SES-5 satellite was designed and built for SES by Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) and will provide fresh capacity for Africa, Europe and the Middle East. To be positioned at the orbital slot of 5 degrees East, the spacecraft 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.
Ka-band uplink capability allows 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.
The satellite 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.
Romain Bausch, president and CEO of SES, declared: “SES-5 marks the second successful ILS-Proton launch in 2012 for SES and the third SES satellite delivered by Space Systems/Loral in the last 10 months. SES-5 furthermore hosts the EGNOS payload for the European Commission. The powerful new satellite enters the global SES fleet as Number 51. We would like to thank the launch teams of Space Systems/Loral, ILS, Khrunichev and SES for their dedicated work that ultimately ensured total mission success. SES would also like to thank the European Commission for entrusting SES with the EGNOS hosted payload. After thorough in-orbit testing, SES and its customers can now look forward to SES-5 providing new, state-of-the-art satellite capacity across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.’
The next SES launch is scheduled for September 2012, when an Ariane 5 booster will orbit the ASTRA 2F spacecraft, manufactured by Astrium, from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
