Eutelsat’s massive 70B craft was successfully orbited from the floating Sea Launch platform overnight on December 3-4. The launch took place at 20.44 GMT on the 3rd. The huge 5.2 tonne satellite is to be placed at 70.5 degrees East.

Eutelsat, in a statement, said the craft’s solar panels had been partly deployed some two hours after launch.  The satellite was built by Astrium using its popular E3000 platform, and with its 48 Ku-band transponders will more than double Eutelsat’s operational capacity from 70.5 degrees East serving Europe, Africa, Asia and as far as Australia.

Eutelsat 70B will undergo pre-service tests once in orbit and is expected to enter service in mid-January 2013.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Bank positive on AST SpaceMobile
2. ITU’s hands are tied on space jamming
3. Bezos and Musk rockets delay launches
4. Bank: Canal+ on a “super aggregation” strategy
5. Italy: Confusion over Starlink contract
6. Bezos vs Musk on Jan 10th
7. SES has eyes on D2D
8. Eutelsat suffers flak over OneWeb outage
9. New Glenn will challenge SpaceX

Categories: Blogs, Inside Satellite