Nilesat 301 launch success
June 9, 2022
By Chris Forrester
On June 8th at 5:04 p.m. Eastern Time, a SpaceX workhorse Falcon 9 rocket launched Egypt’s Nilesat 301 satellite to a geosynchronous transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Flying this mission was a first stage booster making its seventh flight. After it completed its main task of lifting the second stage and payload out of the atmosphere, the booster landed safely on SpaceX’s drone ship ‘Just Read the Instructions’.
The 4,100kg spacecraft was built by Thales Alenia Space in France and is based on their Spacebus 4000B2 satellite bus.
Nilesat 301 will operate in a geostationary orbit, occupying a slot at 7° West. From there, it will deliver television, radio, and internet to customers across North Africa and the Middle East.
The new satellite is expected to have a service life of at least 15 years, which will begin once it raises itself into geostationary orbit and Thales Alenia Space completes all of its checkouts and tests of the craft.
The Nilesat-301 mission was SpaceX’s 23rd launch of 2022, in what is expected to be their busiest year yet.
Later this month SpaceX will launch SES-22 for the Luxembourg satellite operator.