Measat-3 to be deorbited
August 6, 2021
By Chris Forrester
Malaysia’s damaged Measat-3 satellite, which suffered an anomaly back on June 21st, is to be retired and de-orbited.
The incident resulted in a complete outage of service and is still under investigation in partnership with Measat’s satellite provider Boeing Satellite Systems. Despite maintaining continuous telemetry and command control of Measat-3, further testing and recovery efforts found that the satellite could not re-enter service. The satellite will be de-orbited in the following weeks.
Measat is currently finalising the launch date of Measat-3d for early 2022, which is expected to restore its in-orbit satellite redundancy at the company’s key orbital hot-slot 91.5°E, providing DTH, Broadcasting and Telecommunications services for the region, besides significantly enhancing broadband speed of up to 100 Mbps in areas with limited or without any terrestrial connectivity throughout Malaysia.
Measat-3 drifted from its designated orbital slot at 91.5 degrees East in a westerly direction. By July 10th, it had drifted to 86.4 degrees East and a couple of days later to 84.7 degrees East. Data on August 6th (at 0942 GMT) suggested it had drifted to 76 degrees East and moving at 0.677 degrees per day.