Eutelsat’s revolutionary KaSat launched
December 28, 2010
Eutelsat’s giant KaSat satellite was successfully launched from Kazakhstan on Dec 26th (at 21.51 GMT). The satellite was scheduled for separation from the rocket some 9 hours after lift-off.
The Astrium-built satellite, weighing more than six tonnes, will then require some weeks of in-orbit testing ahead of going live for operational purposes.
Kasat is unique over Europe in that it is the first craft to operate entirely in Ka-band, a set of transmission frequencies as yet largely untapped. Eutelsat will be wholesaling this bandwidth to re-sellers for consumer broadband-by-satellite services, and available from Scandinavia to the Middle East.
Other posts by Chris Forrester:
- Rivada visits Terran Orbital’s manufacturing HQ
- Avanti wins spectrum debt obligation case
- SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers
- IRIS2 already in trouble?
- Intelsat contemplates next steps
- SpaceX: 2.7m customers and $180bn value
- Boeing, Virgin Galactic in court battle
- Jupiter-3 a changemaker
- Terran Orbital is again Compliant