SES-5 (also known as Astra 4B and Sirius 5) is a commercial

geostationary A geostationary orbit, also referred to as a geosynchronous equatorial orbit''Geostationary orbit'' and ''Geosynchronous (equatorial) orbit'' are used somewhat interchangeably in sources. (GEO), is a circular geosynchronous orbit in altitud ...

communication satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. ...

operated by

SES SES, S.E.S., Ses and similar variants can refere to: Business and economics * Socioeconomic status * Scottish Economic Society, a learned society in Scotland * SES, callsign of the TV station SES/RTS (Mount Gambier, South Australia) * SES, a ...

It was launched on 9 July 2012. The launch was arranged by

International Launch Services International Launch Services, Inc. (ILS) is a joint venture with exclusive rights to the worldwide sale of commercial Angara and Proton rocket launch services. Proton launches take place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan while Angara is l ...

(ILS).

History

In October 2008,

SES Sirius SES Sirius, formerly called Nordic Satellite AB (NSAB) was the owner and operator of the two Sirius satellites, which provide the Nordic countries and the Baltic states, with TV, radio, data and communications solutions. The company is today entirel ...

AB of

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

(then 90% owned by SES and prior to 2003 called Nordic Satellite AB) ordered the Sirius 5 satellite from

Space Systems/Loral SSL, formerly Space Systems/Loral, LLC (SS/L), of Palo Alto, California, is a wholly owned manufacturing subsidiary of Maxar Technologies. SSL designs and builds satellites and space systems for a wide variety of government and commercial cust ...

. Following full acquisition by SES in 2010, SES Sirius was renamed

SES Astra SES Astra SA was a corporate subsidiary of SES, based in Betzdorf, in eastern Luxembourg, that maintained and operated the Astra series of geostationary communication satellites between 2001 and 2011. Formed in 1985 as Société Européenne ...

(a subsidiary of SES) and the satellite renamed Astra 4B. In 2011, SES Astra was merged back into SES and the satellite renamed SES-5.''SES adopts new management structure''
Broadband TV News. 2 May 2011. Accessed 27 May 2022

Satellite description

It was constructed by

, and is based on the

SSL 1300 The SSL 1300, previously the LS-1300 and the FS-1300, is a satellite bus produced by Maxar Technologies. Total broadcast power ranges from 5 to 25 kW, and the platform can accommodate from 12 to 150 transponders. The SSL 1300 is a modular platf ...

satellite bus A satellite bus (or spacecraft bus) is the main body and structural component of a satellite or spacecraft, in which the payload and all scientific instruments are held. Bus-derived satellites are less customized than specially-produced satelli ...

. It carries 24

C-band C band may refer to: * C band (IEEE), a radio frequency band from 4 to 8 GHz * C band (infrared), an infrared band from 1530 to 1565 nm (roughly 200 THz) * C band (NATO) The NATO C-band is the obsolete designation given to the radio frequen ...

and 36

Ku-band The Ku band () is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in the microwave range of frequencies from 12 to 18 gigahertz (GHz). The symbol is short for "K-under" (originally ), because it is the lower part of the original NATO K band ...

transponders In telecommunications, a transponder is a device that, upon receiving a signal, emits a different signal in response. The term is a blend of ''transmitter'' and ''responder''. In air navigation or radio frequency identification, a flight trans ...

. It covers

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

, Europe,

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

EGNOSS payload

SES 5 is also carrying a

hosted payload A hosted payload is a module attached to a commercial satellite with communications circuitry that operates independently of the main spacecraft but which shares the satellite's power supply and transponders. The concept has been also been referred ...

L-band The L band is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) designation for the range of Frequency, frequencies in the radio spectrum from 1 to 2 gigahertz (GHz). This is at the top end of the ultra high frequency (UHF) band, at t ...

navigation terminal for the executive commission of the 27-nation

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

. The terminal operated as part of the

European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is a satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) developed by the European Space Agency and Eurocontrol on behalf of the European Commission. Currently, it supplements GPS by reportin ...

(EGNOS) system, which provides verification of

Global Positioning System The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide ge ...

(GPS) navigation signals through the use of satellites in geostationary orbit.

Launch

Sirius 5 was the original name of the SES-5 satellite. SES-5 that was launched on 9 July 2012, at 18:38:30

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

from

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian Human spaceflight, crewed spaceflights are l ...

, Site 81/24 and is now co-located with

Astra 4A Astra 4A (originally Sirius 4) is one of the Astra communications satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a Transponder (satellite communications), transp ...

(

Sirius 4 Sirius was a constellation of communications satellites operated at 5.0° East in geostationary orbit (GEO) by NSAB (later SES Sirius, and now a non-autonomous part of SES, owner and operator of the Astra satellites). They carried digital sa ...

) at 5° East. This satellite provides a similar European and African coverage as

References

External links