Lockheed Martin Has 20th Straight A2100 Success with the Launch Of NSS-6 Satellite
The NSS-6
telecommunications satellite, designed and built by Lockheed Martin Commercial
Space Systems (LMCSS) for New Skies Satellites N.V., was successfully launched
today from Kourou, French Guiana. Lift-off occurred at 3:04 p.m. Pacific
Standard Time (PST) aboard an Ariane 4 launch vehicle provided by Arianespace
of Evry, France. Initial contact with the satellite, called acquisition of
signal, was confirmed at 4:06 p.m. PST from the Lockheed Martin satellite
tracking station in Uralla, Australia.
The successful launch of NSS-6 represents the 20th straight launch of an
A2100 spacecraft for customers worldwide. The first A2100 was launched in
1996 and are all currently operational. The A2100 geosynchronous spacecraft
is designed to meet a wide variety of telecommunications needs ranging from Ka
band/broadband services, fixed satellite services in a Ku-band payload
configuration, to high-power direct broadcast services using the Ku-band
frequency spectrum. The A2100’s modular design features a reduction in parts,
simplifying construction, increasing on-orbit reliability and reducing weight
and cost.
A Ku-band satellite with Ka-band uplink capabilities, NSS-6 is designed to
provide fully interactive access to high-speed Internet and other multimedia
communications. Additionally, it can 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.
“We are extremely pleased with today’s successful launch of the NSS-6
spacecraft, and we are especially proud of the impressive reliability track
record of our A2100 satellite,” said Ted Gavrilis, president of Lockheed
Martin Commercial Space Systems. “I congratulate our entire team for their
relentless focus on achieving 100 percent mission success and we look forward
to delivering another excellent satellite to our customer, New Skies,
following our on-orbit checkout of all spacecraft systems.”
NSS-6 is uniquely configured to accommodate evolving market conditions and
to satisfy the varied demands of New Skies customers, including Internet
Service Providers (ISPs), broadcasters, direct-to-home services providers,
telecommunications carriers 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 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
New Skies Satellites (NYSE: NSK; AEX) 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. Including NSS-6, New Skies has six
satellites in orbit and ground facilities around the world. The company has
one additional spacecraft under construction, which is planned to serve the
Americas from a new orbital location 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 Beijing, 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.
For images of the NSS-6 satellite, please visit:
http://lmms.external.lmco.com/photos/commercial_space/ and click on New Skies.
