Second Inmarsat-4 satellite set for launch on 5 November
* High speed internet connectivity anywhere
* ‘Switchboard in the sky’ featuring the highest frequency agility and mission flexibility
Long Beach, California, 02 November 2005
The second Inmarsat-4 satellite, designed and built by EADS Astrium, Europe’s leading satellite manufacturer, is scheduled for launch on November 5 from a Sea Launch platform in the mid-Pacific. The Inmarsat-4 F2 is the world’s most sophisticated commercial communications satellite.
Three Inmarsat I-4 spacecraft have been built to support Inmarsat's Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN), a new service that will deliver unprecedented voice and broadband data connectivity to mobile users around the world.
The second giant Inmarsat-4 satellite will be positioned in geostationary orbit at 53 degrees West longitude. It will enable Inmarsat to address a wide area covering South America, most of North America, the Atlantic Ocean and part of the Pacific Ocean. The first satellite launched in March 2005 covers Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as well as the Indian Ocean. A third satellite is virtually complete and in stand-by storage. All three satellites are identical and interchangeable - their coverage is programmable and can be reconfigured in orbit.
These satellites are based on EADS Astrium's Eurostar E3000 satellite platform, five of which have entered commercial service since 2004. All three Inmarsat-4 satellites are equipped with an electric propulsion system. Their 45m wide solar array generate 14 kW of electrical power at beginning of life and the spacecraft weighs 5,987 kg at launch. The main body is 7 metres high and the unfurlable antenna reflector has a diameter of about 10 metres. EADS Astrium’s facilities in the UK, Germany, Spain and France all contributed to the design and manufacture of the highly innovative spacecraft. The spacecraft will provide continued support for existing Inmarsat systems and offer additional capacity and performance. They will also provide the new Broadband Global Area Network service over the major land masses and a large part of the ocean surface. This will extend coverage of third generation terrestrial mobile networks such as UMTS (3G) for telephony, data and high-speed Internet access to laptop-sized terminals. This will enable business travellers, disaster relief workers, field based oil workers, journalists, etc to operate a virtual office anywhere in the satellite footprint. A typical user terminal looking like a small laptop could receive simultaneous voice and data at 492 Kbps.
In order to support small terminals over the whole area with the high signal strength required, each satellite can digitally form 228 narrow spot beams. More power and spectrum can be allocated to certain beams, further enhancing mission flexibility to cope with the fluctuations in traffic. An on-board digital signal processor, designed and built in the UK, routes the signals to the different beams, acting like a switchboard in the sky: any signal uplink can be routed to any mobile downlink beam and vice versa. Frequency agility and extensive frequency re-use across the beams permit efficient utilisation of the available channels in the L-band spectrum to provide increased capacity.
The Inmarsat-4 satellites also feature 19 wide beams and full global coverage to provide continuity of existing Inmarsat services for maritime, air and emergency services. A navigation package extends and enhances the navigation signals already available on Inmarsat-3 satellites for the air traffic community.
Antoine Bouvier, CEO of EADS Astrium said: “The Inmarsat-4 satellites are the most sophisticated commercial communications satellites ever built, and tangible proof of our ability to design and manufacture advanced and flexible communications payloads. We are proud of this achievement, and thank Inmarsat for the confidence they have in EADS Astrium on this innovative and ambitious programme.”
EADS ASTRIUM
EADS Astrium is Europe’s leading satellite system specialist. Its activities cover complete civil and military telecommunications and Earth observation systems, science and navigation programmes, and all spacecraft avionics and equipment. EADS Astrium is a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS SPACE which is dedicated to providing civil and defence space systems. In 2004 EADS SPACE had a turnover of €2.6 billion and 11,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain.
EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2004, EADS generated revenues of €31.8 billion and employed a workforce of more than 110,000.
Press contact:
Rémi ROLAND
EADS SPACE (FR)
Tel.: +33 (0) 1 42 24 27 34
Jeremy CLOSE
EADS SPACE (UK)
Tel.: +44 (0) 1438 77 38 72
Mathias PIKELJ
EADS SPACE (GER)
Tel.: +49 (0) 7545 8 91 23
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