Arianespace Flight 154 Status Report 30 Aug 2002

The Flight 154 was topped off today when the Intelsat 906 satellite was
installed atop the Ariane 4.

Enclosed in its protective payload fairing, Intelsat 906 was mated to the
Ariane 44L version of Ariane 4 vehicle inside the mobile service tower in
the ELA-2 launch zone

Flight 154 is scheduled for liftoff during the early morning hours of
September 6, and will come one week after Arianespace’s successful Flight
155 – which used an Ariane 5 to orbit the Atlantic BirdTM 1
telecommunications satellite and the MSG-1 meteorology spacecraft.

The non-sequential numbering of Flight 155/154 resulted from mission
planning; once a flight number is applied to a launch, that reference
remains the same even if one flight goes ahead before the other.

The upcoming Flight 154 will be Arianespace’s 10th launch of 2002. The
previous nine missions used six Ariane 4 family vehicles and three Ariane
5s, and placed 12 payloads into orbit.

Intelsat 906 was built by Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, California and
will be positioned at 64.15 deg. East. It will join Intelsat’s fleet of
relay spacecraft that provide Internet, broadcast, telephony and corporate
network solutions services for the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle
East.