SES-5

SES -5 ( formerly Sirius 5 or Astra 4B) is a commercial communications satellite, SES World Skies of the Netherlands.

Launch and orbit

He was taken July 9, 2012 at 18:38 UTC clock by a Proton -M carrier rocket from Baikonur launch site by International Launch Services in geostationary orbit. The launch was originally scheduled for June 19, 2012, at the launch preparations but errors were detected in the first stage of the launch vehicle and moved the start. A second shift from the 7th to the 9th of July, was due to problems in checking the fuel tanks of Proton-M. As SES 5 communications satellite has a comparatively large take-off mass of 6 tons, he came to a transfer orbit with a fairly low perigee. His goal in the geostationary orbit, the satellite reached on July 10 by repeatedly firing his own drive, which consists of a nitrogen tetroxide and monomethyl -operated with apogee motor of the type R -4D with a thrust of about 445 N.

Payload

The three -axis stabilized satellite is equipped with 36 C-band and 24 Ku- band transponders and one operating in the L -band range navigation payload for the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service ( EGNOS) and is of the position 5 degrees East (together with offer Astra 4A) Direct-to -home telecommunications services. This is one of the two Ku- band antennas to customers in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries provide ( by Viasat ), while the other supplies the sub-Saharan Africa. In the north of Germany are emanations of the former with the strongest satellite signals, but all transmissions are encrypted with Videoguard. Of the two C- band antennas has a global coverage and the other takes over the coverage of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. SES 5 provides additional Ka - band uplink capabilities that allow for flexible operation between Europe and Africa. It was built based on the LS -1300 satellite bus from the U.S. company Space Systems / Loral and has a design life of 15 years.