From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Communications satellite
Eutelsat 5 West B
is a geostationary
communications satellite
. It is owned by European
satellite communications
company
Eutelsat
. It launched on October 9, 2019, at 10:17 UTC on a
Proton-M
rocket from
Baikonur Cosmodrome
in
Kazakhstan
.
[7]
The satellite was built by
Northrop Grumman
and
Airbus Defence and Space
and has an expected operational life of more than 15 years. Situated at 5° west, it broadcasts
satellite television
, radio and other digital data. It was scheduled to enter operational service at the end of 2019, but deployment difficulties delayed service.
Problems
[
edit
]
On 24 October 2019 Eutelsat released a statement saying the company was investigating an incident on one of the bird's two solar arrays.
[8]
On 17 January 2020 Eutelsat issued a statement saying that one of the two arrays was unusable, and the resulting power shortage meant that the satellite could operate at only 45% capacity. The satellite was expected to enter service in late January 2020. The satellite was planned to replace the
Eutelsat 5 West A
. However, due to the power shortage, Eutelsat 5 West A ultimately remained operational for longer than originally planned in a fuel-saving inclined orbit. This extension was one part of the mitigation activities. Eutelsat 5 West B's problems was projected to cost Eutelsat several million euros. Eutelsat had not decided (as of January 17) the size of the ensuing insurance claim.
[9]
The European GNSS Agency's GEO-3, a hosted payload of the Eutelsat West B, was not affected by the power loss and was expected to function normally. It entered service on February 14, 2020.
[10]
References
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Launches are separated by dots ( ? ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ).
Crewed flights
are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).
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