Space Systems Loral has resumed the orbit raising of the Intelsat-19 satellite following the failure of one of its two solar arrays to deploy after its successful launch via Sea Launch on 31 May.
SS/L has formed an internal review board to determine the…
Space Systems Loral has resumed the orbit raising of the Intelsat-19 satellite following the failure of one of its two solar arrays to deploy after its successful launch via Sea Launch on 31 May.
SS/L has formed an internal review board to determine the root cause of the problem and next week a formal failure review board comprising SS/L, Intelsat, Sea Launch and a number of outside experts will meet.
The satellite is fully insured, believed to be for just over US$325m, and Intelsat has approximately thirty days in which to notify its insurers of a claim.
According to one source, some underwriters are already fearing a likely loss and based on previous non-deployment anomalies, the issue could mean a loss of up to 60% of its insured value.
Back in May 2011, Canadian satellite operator Telesat’s Telstar-14R/Estrela do Sul suffered a deployment issue to its north solar array, diminishing the amount of power available for its transponders and reducing the life expectancy of the spacecraft. Telesat subsequently filed an insurance claim of approximately US$125m. The original Estrela Du Sol satellite also suffered a deployment failure back in 2004.
Both of these satellites were based on SS/L’s 1300 platform, however, the satellite manufacturer pointed out that the deployment failure in the first satellite was due to damage while the satellite was inside the launch vehicle fairing and the cause of the Telstar-14 failure was determined to be a snagged cable.
SS/L told SatelliteFinance that “the data available on Intelsat-19 very clearly indicates that this is not the same issue that we had last year.”
“For Intelsat 19, we tested the solar array on the ground, and the satellite was fully tested according to the launch vehicle provider’s environmental requirements. We successfully deployed its solar array wings on the ground multiple times with it connected to the satellite just before shipping to the launch site, and we have verified that the final solar array integration on the satellite was executed following our standard procedures,” the satellite manufacturer added.
As a result of the initial investigation into Intelsat-19, SS/L has advised its customers, SES and EchoStar to proceed with normal launch base operations to prepare the satellites for launch later this month.
Intelsat also has another satellite based on SS/L’s 1300 platform, Intelsat-20, due to be launched later this year. The company told SatelliteFinance that it was too early to tell whether this launch will need to be delayed. “The investigation team, comprised of members from Intelsat and SS/L, need to complete their work before we can have a view on other missions,” Intelsat said.
Intelsat-19 is the planned replacement for Intelsat-8 at 166E, which serves customers in the north and southwest Pacific region. The satellite operator stated that Intelsat-8 is currently expected to remain in service through the end of 2019 and therefore no customer services are immediately affected by the delay.
