SES AMERICOM Orders Additional Spacecraft from Orbital Sciences Corporation



SES AMERICOM,  and Orbital Sciences Corporation, announced the order of a third spacecraft under the multi-satellite contract both companies announced in May 2007. Under this contract, the first and second satellites ordered were AMC-5R and a ground spare. That ground spare will now become AMC-1R, and a new ground spare will be produced for a future use.

Planned for launch in the second half of 2009, AMC-1R will have a permanent home in geosynchronous Earth orbit at 103 degrees West longitude.

"The strength of our relationship with Orbital and the efficiencies of the multi-spacecraft agreement permit SES to provide a distinctly high level of mission certainty. Our connections with our customers are underscored by continually meeting and exceeding their expectations for reliability and quality of service. This combination of mutually beneficial supplier-customer-operator relationships, and the operational excellence that it forges, powers AMERICOM's superior performance," said Ed Horowitz, President and CEO, SES AMERICOM.

“Our close collaboration with SES in defining standardized spacecraft requirements for multiple satellites is enabling us to produce, deliver and launch one of our STAR spacecraft in under 24 months,” stated Mr. Mike Larkin, Orbital’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Space Systems Group. “This process highlights one of Orbital’s major competitive advantages, which is our ability to deliver a GEO satellite in two years or less,” he added.

Taking full advantage of the contract’s ordering flexibility, AMC-1R was the ground spare originally ordered with AMC-5R. With 24 transponders in each frequency band (C and Ku), AMC-1R will initially operate at 101 degrees West, and then move to its permanent home at 103 degrees West.

Orbital will serve as the prime contractor for the new spacecraft, which is based on the most powerful version of the STAR 2 satellite platform. AMC-1R and the identical ground spare will be hybrid satellites; a portion of each frequency payload will be cross-strapped, allowing signals to be transmitted to the satellite in one frequency and received in the other. The spacecraft will generate approximately five kilowatts of payload power and will have two deployable reflectors. Delivery of AMC-1R is scheduled for mid-2009, for a second half 2009 launch supplied by Sea Launch on the Zenit-3SLB vehicle called Land Launch.