SES Astra has announced that it will host a payload on one of its newly ordered satellites to serve the European Geo-stationery Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS).
This is the second EGNOS payload SES has agreed to host on behalf of the European…
SES Astra has announced that it will host a payload on one of its newly ordered satellites to serve the European Geo-stationery Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS).
This is the second EGNOS payload SES has agreed to host on behalf of the European Commission. It will be placed on the Astra 5B satellite, which is one of the group of four new satellites SES ordered from EADS Astrium in December 2009.
Astra 5B will be launched to the 31.5E orbital position in the second quarter of 2013. The payload will operate in the L band, and will be served by a ground infrastructure also run by SES.
EGNOS serves as an augmentation system to current and future satellite navigation systems, including GPS, Galileo and GLONASS. It monitors and reports the reliability of satellite navigation systems over Europe, though the new payload offers the chance to widen its coverage to Africa.
Astra has already agreed to host an EGNOS payload on the Sirius 5 satellite that is due to be launched in the second half of 2011.
SES Astra CEO Ferdinand Kayser said: “The fact that SES ASTRA is now providing two hosted payloads for EGNOS is a great endorsement of our excellence and expertise in the field of satellite programmes and related operations. It proves that our strategy to diversify our business and to provide global telecommunications services for governments and supra-national institutions, as well as multinational organisations, is bearing fruit.”
“We are convinced that our skills and expertise, as well as our fleet assets, greatly benefit our institutional and governmental customers, and make us an ideal partner to provide additional hosted payloads and full satellite programmes in the future.”
Astra is pursuing increased expansion into the hosted payload sector through its Governments and Institutions division. At a press briefing in November the unit’s head Philippe Glaesener said that Astra is seeking to secure three or four large hosted payload contracts in the government sector over the next three years.
