Athena-Fidus

Athena - Fidus ( Access on theaters for European Nations Allied forces - French Italian Dual Use Satellite ) is a military communications satellite, the French space agency CNES and the Italian Space Agency ASI. The project involves the Ministries of Defence of Belgium, France and Italy, and the French and Italian civil protection.

He was suspended on February 6, 2014 at 21:30 clock UTC by an Ariane 5 ECA rocket from the launch pad ELA -3 of the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, together with ABS 2 after 27 minutes in a geostationary transfer orbit ( GTO). The satellite reached from this orbit with a perigee of 244.4 kilometers and an apogee of 35 937 km geostationary orbit under its own power.

The 140 million euros made ​​in Cannes in France expensive Athena - Fidus is equipped with 23 Ka and other EHF - band transponders and will of the position 38 ° Ost038 to complement the already orbiting the earth French Syracuse and Italian Sicral satellites serve. It was built on the basis of the satellite bus Spacebus 4000B2 by Thales Alenia Space and has a design life of 15 years. The payload is to provide a transmission capacity of 3 Gbit / s in the Ka-band, based on the protocols DVB -RCS and DVB -S2. The Italian payload consists of separate amplifier units and special antennas for civilian and military customers. The antenna farm includes two antennas ( 30/20-GHz-Antenne for civilian use and a 44/30/20-GHz-Antenne for the military ) and two steerable antenna 30/20 GHz broadband telecommunications services for the Italian military, as well as to serve for institutional and humanitarian operations outside Italy.