Preparing to meet demands for more high-end communications, the European conglomerate Eutelsat is readying a new satellite for launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome.
A Proton rocket carrying the Siberian-European Satellite (Sesat) communications spacecraft, is scheduled to take off on Monday, April 17 at 6:05 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (21:06 GMT; April 18, 3:06 a.m. Baikonur time) from the launch pad 39 in Area 200 of the Russian launch site in Kazakhstan.
Once in geostationary orbit over the Equator, the 2.5-ton spacecraft should provide high bandwidth communications between Eutelsats core markets in Europe, North Africa and Asia. Sesat will also open the organizations first communication gateway to the Indian subcontinent.
One of the three satellites Eutelsat plans to launch this year, Sesat will become the first communications spacecraft built by a Russian prime contractor for a Western customer.
The NPO-PM development and production center based in the eastern Siberia town of Zheleznogorsk, designed and built the satellite itself. Alcatel France, based in Toulouse provided the communications payload.
When Sesat enters service in June 2000, Eutelsat plans to use the spacecraft to provide high-speed internet access, high-volume data transmission and video-broadcasting, to support corporate networks and provide messaging and positioning services for mobile users.
Eutelsat was founded in 1977 and is owned by 47 shareholders in Europe. Its largest investors include Italian, French, British and German telecommunications companies. The organization operates 15 satellites in geostationary orbit.
Launch operations
Final preparation for the Sesat launch in Baikonur will start around 6.5 hours before its scheduled take off Monday, when ground personnel will begin loading the Proton boosters propellant tanks.
The service tower covering the rocket on the launch pad will be removed, and personnel will be evacuated to a safe distance from the complex an hour and a half before launch.
The launch window for the Sesat launch will last 110 minutes. Less than 10 minutes after take off the Sesat spacecraft and its Block DM upper stage should reach initial Earth orbit.
The main engine of the Block DM upper stage is scheduled to fire for the first time one hour and 13 minutes after the launch and burn for seven minutes and six seconds.
The maneuver will send the spacecraft into a highly elliptical transfer orbit. When the Sesat/Block DM vehicle reaches the apogee of the transfer orbit around six and a half hours after launch, the upper stage should fire again for around three minutes to circularize the orbit of the spacecraft at an altitude of about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers).
The separation of the Sesat satellite and its upper stage is planned for six hours 35 minutes after launch.
The launch will be the Proton boosters third mission, after the launcher returned to flight in February following an accident in October 1999.
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