Advanced Television

Amos-5 on station, but dead

November 24, 2015

By Chris Forrester

The mystery over the problems at the Israeli-owned Amos-5 satellite has deepened.  It emerged that the satellite is still at its assigned orbital position of 17 degrees East. The spacecraft dramatically went silent at 4.44am (UTC) on November 21st.

However, Space-Communications, which owns the satellite, now says it had “no information” on the precise nature of the problem, nor whether the loss is total.

There has been some press speculation that the craft might have been hit by so-called ‘space junk’ but had this unlikely problem occurred it is likely that the craft would have suffered a move from its designated orbital position.

Amos-5 was 65 per cent full as far as clients were concerned, and other satellite operators – as well as Spacecom – are now scrambling to fill the gap created by the lost satellite.  The majority of clients were based or feeding bandwidth into Africa.

“There are several options for transferring customers and we are closely working with customers vis a vis other satellite operators to ensure minimal interruption,” the company said. “Spacecom is being completely transparent with our clients. We are working to find solutions for each and every client.”

Amos-5 is fully insured.

Categories: Articles, DTH/Satellite