Telkom 4, also known as Merah Putih, is an Indonesian geostationary communication satellite built by

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 ...

that is located at an orbital position of 108° East and is operated by PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk. The satellite is based on the SSL 1300 satellite bus and has a life expectancy of 16 years. It was launched on 7 August 2018, at 05:18

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 ...

or 12:18

Jakarta Jakarta (; , Betawi language, Betawi: ''Jakartè''), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (; ''DKI Jakarta'') and formerly known as Batavia, Dutch East Indies, Batavia until 1949, is the capital and largest city of Indonesia and ...

Time, using the SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 launcher from

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the sta ...

, Florida, United States.

Satellite description

This satellite carries 60 active

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 ...

consisting of 24 C-Band transponders and 12 Extended C-Band transponders which will serve the

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

region, including Indonesia, as well as 24 C-Band transponders which will reach the

South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...

region. The satellite relies on the SSL 1300 satellite bus with a design life of 16 years with up to 21 years of fuel remaining. The development of the Merah Putih Satellite involves two U.S. companies, namely SSL as a satellite manufacturer and

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

as a

launch service provider A launch service provider or launch vehicle provider is a type of company that delivers a payload into space, including the delivery of satellites, spacecraft, cargo, astronauts, and potentially space tourists. Services provided may include furnis ...

. The total mass of the satellite is . Telkom-4 is devoted to serving

high-definition television High-definition television (HDTV) describes a television or video system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since at least 1933; in more recent times, it ref ...

(HDTV) broadcasts,

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

and

Internet services An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non ...

Launch

Telkom-4 was launched using the SpaceX

Falcon 9 Block 5 Falcon 9 Block 5 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable, human-rating certification, human-rated, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. I ...

first stage B1046.2 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), Florida, United States on 7 August 2018, at 01:18 UTC. The launch was the first time SpaceX reused one of the Block 5 variant of the Falcon 9 rocket boosters. After successfully separating from the second stage, the first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship

Of Course I Still Love You An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is a modified ocean-going barge developed by SpaceX and equipped with propulsion systems to maintain precise position and a large landing platform. They were developed to recover the first stage (als ...

Project cost

The launch of the Telkom-4 (Merah Putih) satellite saves around 25% of the cost of launching the previous satellite, the

Telkom-3S Telkom-3S is an Indonesian geostationary communications satellite built as a replacement of Telkom-3 that was lost due to a launch failure on 6 August 2012. Telkom-3S was successfully launched on 14 February 2017, at 21:39 UTC and commissioned ...

satellite, which was launched on 15 February 2017, which cost US$215 million. Meanwhile, the Merah Putih satellite only costs US$165 million and includes insurance costs of US$10 million.

Service users

Due to the inadequacy of the

Palapa-D Palapa-D was an Indonesian geostationary communications satellite which was operated by Indosat Ooredoo. It was built by Thales Alenia Space, based on the Spacebus, Spacebus-4000B3 satellite bus, and carries 35 C band (IEEE), C-band and 5 Ku ban ...

satellite to operate until July 2020, while the replacement satellite, Nusantara Dua ( Palapa N1), failed to reach orbit, many TV and radio channels migrated from Palapa-D to Telkom-4. Below is a list of frequency of channels that have migrated as of July 2020:

References

External links

Telkom Group
– Official Website PT.Telekomunikasi Indonesia.tbk
Telkomsat
– Satellite Operator's Official Website

– channel frequency list {{Orbital launches in 2018 Satellites of Indonesia Telkom Indonesia Television in Indonesia