Successful launches for Amos-17, Intelsat I-39
August 7, 2019
By Chris Forrester
August 6th was a busy night both at the Kourou space centre in French Guiana and at Florida’s Cape Canaveral.
Arianespace successfully launched Intelsat’s I-39 as well as the European Data Relay System’s satellite which has an additional payload in the form of bandwidth dubbed Hylas 3 for London-based Avanti Communications.
The launch took place at 4:30 pm (local time) and made this the third successful Ariane 5 mission in 2019. Intelsat 39 is the 61st satellite launched by Arianespace for Intelsat, starting with its first mission for this operator in 1983. It will replace the Intelsat 902 spacecraft, launched by Arianespace in 2001.
Intelsat 39 was built by Maxar in Palo Alto, California. It is the 57th satellite launched by Arianespace using a Maxar platform.
Meanwhile in Florida, a SpaceX rocket launched the delayed Amos-17 satellite for Israel’s Spacecom. The rocket blasted off at 7:23 pm (local time) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
The satellite was deployed approximately 32 minutes after the lift-off, according to SpaceX’s live broadcast.
It was the third time that SpaceX had used the main rocket’s booster. It was not recovered after the launch.
The SpaceX launch was ‘free’ insofar as it was compensation for the lost Amos 6 satellite that was destroyed in an explosion in 2016.
The Amos-17 satellite, designed by Israeli company Spacecom using Boeing’s advanced digital payload technology, is poised to support growth in a variety of broadcast, broadband, mobility and data services throughout the African continent, according to SpaceX.
Amos-17 will operate in the C, Ku and Ka bands with a “digital channelizer” to provide fixed high throughput C-band coverage to Africa, steerable fixed high throughput Ka-band coverage to anywhere from China to Brazil, and extensive Ku-band coverage throughout Africa with additional coverage in Europe, the Middle East, China, and India.