Advanced Television

SES organises ‘celestial ballet’ for AMC-9 services

July 20, 2017

By Chris Forrester

Losing a satellite is traumatic for any satellite operator, its clients and even the financial community. But the loss of AMC-9 which failed on June 16th (from 83 deg West) and is now drifting harmlessly and inert, has seen its clients almost completely replaced.

SES has drifted AMC-6 to 83 degrees West, according to a report in Satellite Transponder Guide (STG). AMC-6 cannot provide a full replacement service to AMC-9 so SES had also used AMC-4 for a couple of weeks while it waited for the arrival of AMC-6.

However, with AMC-4 no longer needed it has continued its drift towards 134.9 degrees West where it will be used by in-flight communications company Gogo to supply bandwidth to its aircraft clients.

SES continues to use a number of its satellites in the region as ‘gap fillers’ including AMC-15, SES-2 and SES-1.

Categories: Articles, DTH/Satellite