Sri Lanka has secured a US$215m “in orbit delivery contract” with China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) for what will be its first wholly-owned satellite.
Nilakshi Abeynayake, project manager at SupremeSAT, the country’s nascent satellite…
Sri Lanka has secured a US$215m “in orbit delivery contract” with China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) for what will be its first wholly-owned satellite.
Nilakshi Abeynayake, project manager at SupremeSAT, the country’s nascent satellite operator, said the spacecraft will be launched by mid-2016.
“Further details on the orbital slot, technical configuration, etc, will be released shortly,” she told SatelliteFinance.
Called SupremeSAT-2, the bird is the next step in Sri Lanka’s strategic relationship with China as it aims to become one of the largest satellite operators in South Asia.
In November the group saw the launch of its first partly-owned satellite in SupremeSAT-1, also known as ChinaSat-12. That bird was built by France’s Thales Alenia Space and is controlled by China Satcom.
SupremeSAT had planned to buy capacity from the ChinaSat-11 satellite that was launched earlier this year to represent its second space asset, but this deal fell through in the final stages.
Abeynayake explained: “In order to fast track the arrangements related to our fully-owned satellite and also due to a last minute change in the orbital slot positioning of Chinasat-11, we refrained from entering into an agreement with the Chinese over the capacity on the said satellite.”
She declined to comment on whether SupremeSAT-2 will benefit from Chinese ECA support, in keeping with spacecraft CGWIC has built for countries such as Nigeria, Venezuela.
Local reports suggest the satellite operator is being financed mostly by its chairman R. M. Manivannan, the Sri Lankan born millionaire who has so far committed a reported US$320m. In September SupremeSAT brought in Milbank as legal adviser to help finance and structure its space programme.
An ITU spokesman said he expected the SupremeSAT-2 satellite will occupy Sri Lanka’s 50E orbital slot, although it had yet to submit filings for any position.