ASTRA 1K Ready for Take-off On Proton.Business/High-Tech Editors BETZDORF, Luxembourg--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 19, 2002 SES ASTRA - Launch of Largest Commercial Spacecraft Ever Built in Europe Set for November 26th, 2002 - Live coverage from Baikonur on ASTRA 19.2 degrees E SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company (Luxembourg Stock Exchange The Luxembourg Stock Exchange (French: Bourse de Luxembourg) is a stock exchange based in Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg. : SESG SESG Systems Engineering Steering Group SESG Software Engineering Support Group SESG System Engineering Sub-Group ; Frankfurt Stock Exchange Frankfurt Stock Exchange The largest of Germany's eight securities exchanges, operated by Deutsche Borse AS. : SDSL See DSL. SDSL - Single-line Digital Subscriber Line ) is pleased to announce that the final launch preparations for its ASTRA 1K satellite are underway at the Cosmodrome of Baikonur (Kazakhstan). A Proton K launch vehicle is scheduled to carry ASTRA 1K into geostationary transfer orbit A geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is a Hohmann transfer orbit around the Earth between a low Earth orbit (LEO) and a geostationary orbit (GEO). It is an ellipse where the perigee is a point on a LEO and the apogee has the same distance from the Earth as the GEO. during the early morning hours of November 26th, 2002. The launch window for ASTRA 1K opens at 04.04 am Baikonur time, (i.e. 00.04 a.m. CET or 11.04 p.m. GMT on 25.11.02). The launch services for ASTRA 1K onboard Proton are provided by International Launch Services International Launch Services (or ILS) was formed in 1995 as a private spaceflight partnership between the United States defense contractor Lockheed Martin (LM) (LM sold their part later) and the Russian firms Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center and RSC (ILS ILS In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the Israeli Shekel. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. ). This will be the sixth ASTRA ASTRA Ancient Instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application ASTRA Australian Strategic Air Traffic Management Group ASTRA Arab Supply and Trading Corporation ASTRA Automatic System for Transport Analysis ASTRA Automatic Satellite Tracking Research Antenna launch onboard a Proton booster. ASTRA 1K is the fourteenth satellite in the ASTRA constellation and the most versatile and powerful commercial spacecraft ever built in Europe. Manufactured by Alcatel Space of France, the satellite will be co-positioned at SES ASTRA's prime orbital position of 19.2 degrees East. Featuring 52 Ku-Band transponders and an expected lifetime of 13 years, ASTRA 1K sets a number of records for a civil communications satellite: 5.25 tons at lift-off; 13kW end-of-life power through 6-panel solar arrays; total span 37 meters; height 6.6 meters; 10 different antenna reflectors. ASTRA 1K is furthermore the second in the ASTRA series to carry a 2 transponder Ka-Band payload with 1GHz of spectrum, which can be dynamically allocated to 16 different spot-beams covering greater Europe. Three distinct missions Mission 1: ASTRA 1K will provide replacement capacity for the satellites operating in the frequency bands used by ASTRA 1B, 1C and 1D, potentially replacing up to three existing ASTRA satellites. Mission 2: geographic expansion of the ASTRA coverage into Central and Eastern Europe The term "Central and Eastern Europe" came into wide spread use, replacing "Eastern bloc", to describe former Communist countries in Europe, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989/90. as well as the European part of the CIS Cis (sĭs), same as Kish (1.) (1) (CompuServe Information Service) See CompuServe. (2) (Card Information S , through Ku-band frequency re-use. This will provide for two separate spot beams, one focused on the Iberian peninsula, and one on Eastern Europe reaching as far as the Ural mountains. Mission 3: The Ka-Band payload will offer enhanced broadband interactive applications to low-cost user terminals. Live launch coverage from Baikonur on ASTRA 19.2 degrees E The launch of ASTRA 1K onboard Proton will be broadcast free-to-air in analogue and in digital on ASTRA 19.2 degrees East. The live feed from Baikonur will be available across Europe in analogue on ASTRA transponder No. 51 (10.74375 GHz; H-polarisation). A digital feed will be available on ASTRA transponder No. 108 (ASTRA-Vision in the programme guide; 12.55150 GHz; V-polarisation; 22Mb/s; FEC 5/6). The broadcast from Baikonur is scheduled to start at 11.30 pm CET (10.30 p.m. GMT) on November 25th, 2002. It will end approximately 15 minutes after the take-off of the Proton launch vehicle carrying ASTRA 1K into geosynchronous transfer orbit. About SES ASTRA SES ASTRA owns and operates the ASTRA Satellite System, Europe's leading analogue and digital satellite television broadcast system, reaching in excess of 91 million homes in Europe. SES ASTRA became the first operator to provide enhanced transponder availability and transmission security by co-locating commercial satellites at a single orbital slot. The ASTRA satellite fleet currently comprises 13 satellites, transmitting more than 1100 analogue and digital television and radio channels as well as multimedia and Internet services. ASTRA's two prime orbital positions over Europe are 19.2 degrees East and 28.2 degrees East. Additional services are offered from the orbital positions of 23.5 degrees/24.2 degrees East and 5.2 degrees East. As a wholly owned subsidiary Wholly Owned Subsidiary A subsidiary whose parent company owns 100% of its common stock. Notes: In other words, the parent company owns the company outright and there are no minority owners. of SES GLOBAL, the world's premier satellite operator, SES ASTRA is able to provide easy, single entry point access to audiences virtually anywhere on the planet. Visit SES ASTRA at www.ses-astra.com About SES GLOBAL SES GLOBAL, the world's premier satellite operator, was born out of the combination of ASTRA, Europe's leading provider of satellite capacity for direct-to-home reception, and AMERICOM, one of America's premier Fixed Satellite Services operators. The Company today operates 28 fully owned satellites and has access to 13 additional spacecraft through strategic holdings in first-class regional satellite service providers, which are SES GLOBAL partner companies, including AsiaSat and AMERICOM ASIA-PACIFIC in Asia, Star One and Nahuelsat in Latin America, and NSAB NSAB National Security Advisory Board (India) NSAB Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Arztebund (German: National Socialist German Doctors' Association) NSAB Nova Scotia Animal Breeders in Europe. Approximately 95 percent of the world's population live within the footprints of the SES GLOBAL satellite network. In addition, SES GLOBAL is a shareholder in satellite technology companies Gilat Satellite Networks Gilat Satellite Networks is a publicly-traded Israeli company (NASDAQ: GILT. TASE) Gilat designs, develops and markets satellite and hybrid networking products, services and solutions to operators in 85 countries. Ltd. and ND Satcom. SES GLOBAL furthermore is a founding shareholder of Satlynx, a joint venture with Gilat and, pending final agreement and regulatory approval, Alcatel Space and Skybridge, that provides two-way satellite broadband services in Europe. SES GLOBAL shares are listed on the stock exchanges in Luxembourg (SESG) and Frankfurt (SDSL). Visit SES GLOBAL at www.ses-global.com |
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