Lockheed Martin-Built NSS-6 Communications Satellite Shipped to Kourou for a December Launch
The NSS-6
communications satellite, designed and built by Lockheed Martin
Commercial Space Systems (LMCSS) for New Skies Satellites N.V. was
shipped recently from the production facilities in Sunnyvale, Calif.
to Kourou, French Guiana, where it will be readied for an early
December launch.
A Ku-band satellite with Ka-band uplink capabilities, NSS-6 will
provide fully interactive access to high-speed Internet and other
multimedia communications. Additionally, it will provide
direct-to-home broadcasting services as well as the full complement of
traditional enterprise telecommunications services across a large
coverage area stretching from the eastern Mediterranean and Southern
Africa to Australia, Japan and Korea.
NSS-6 is uniquely configured to satisfy the changing demands of
New Skies customers, including Internet Service Providers (ISPs),
broadcasters, direct-to-home services providers and private
corporations. The special features of the satellite will enable New
Skies’ customers to operate fully interactive, high-speed networks
that incorporate small terminals capable of carrying Internet and
other bandwidth-intensive services throughout the coverage area of
NSS-6. NSS-6 is also equipped with extra on-board redundancy for
critical units, minimizing risk of single-point failure throughout the
projected 14-year operational life of the satellite.
Unique features of the satellite include more than 60 high-power
36 MHz -equivalent Ku-band transponders that can be flexibly
allocated, in-orbit, to any of six broad beams covering India, China,
the Middle East (with Southern African spot coverage), Australia,
Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, up to 15 highly
linearized transponders can be assigned to each of the six beams to
respond to changing market demand. Each Ku-band beam is formed by an
independent high-gain antenna system, offering 51-53 dBW in key
markets.
The NSS-6 satellite also has 12 super-high-gain Ka-band uplink
spot beams, facilitating data rates of at least 1 Mbps from antennas
as small as 75 – 90 cm located at customer sites. These high-speed,
high-performance Ka-band uplinks are cross-strapped to the broad
Ku-band downlink beams, efficiently handling the asymmetric levels of
traffic that characterize Internet networks. This design has the added
advantage of maximizing efficient use of spectrum and satellite
capacity.
About New Skies Satellites (AEX, NYSE: NSK)
New Skies Satellites (AEX, NYSE: NSK) is one of only four fixed
satellite communications companies with truly global satellite
coverage, offering video, voice, data and Internet communications
services to a range of telecommunications carriers, broadcasters,
large corporations and Internet service providers around the world.
New Skies has five satellites in geosynchronous orbit and ground
facilities around the world. The company also has two spacecraft under
construction, which are planned to serve the Americas and Asia from
two new orbital locations and the company has secured certain rights
to make use of additional orbital positions, including four serving
the Americas. New Skies is headquartered in The Hague, The
Netherlands, and has offices in London, Johannesburg, New Delhi, Sao
Paulo, Singapore, Sydney and Washington, D.C. Additional information
is available at: www.newskies.com.
Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems markets, designs and
builds geostationary and non-geostationary telecommunications and
remote sensing satellites for customers worldwide. LMCSS is an
operating unit of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, one of the
core business areas of the Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT – News).
Lockheed Martin has a 41-year heritage of building reliable spacecraft
for commercial and military customers, having launched more than 875
spacecraft and clocking nearly 1,500 years of on-orbit performance
experience.
