Arabsat reports on outage problem
April 11, 2023
By Chris Forrester
A faulty thruster on Arabsat’s BADR-6 caused a temporary outage to users throughout the Middle East.
The problem occurred back on February 6th for a “few hours”, said Arabsat, but its broadcasting clients were shifted to other satellites at BADR-6’s co-located position. BADR-6 is also known as Arabsat 4AR.
“The services were all recovered,” stated Arabsat chief strategy officer Abdulhadi Alhassani. He added that BADR-6 has since returned to service and is “healthy”. The craft launched in July 2008 is nearing the end of its 15-year design life.
Arabsat is well advanced to replace the satellite with a new craft, BADR-8, which is due for launch in May by SpaceX. BADR-8 will take a few months to reach its destination orbit given that it is a Airbus-built Eurostar craft and equipped with all-electric propulsion.