SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company are set to see the largest commercial spacecraft ever built in Europe launched on November 26, 2002, when the ASTRA 1K is boosted into GEO orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
A Proton K launch vehicle is scheduled to carry ASTRA 1K into geostationary transfer orbit during the early morning hours of November 26th, 2002. The launch window for ASTRA 1K opens at 04.04 am Baikonur time, (i.e. 00.04 a.m. CET or 11.04 p.m. GMT on 25.11.02).
The launch services for ASTRA 1K onboard Proton are provided by International Launch Services (ILS). This will be the sixth ASTRA launch onboard a Proton booster.
ASTRA 1K is the fourteenth satellite in the ASTRA constellation and the most versatile and powerful commercial spacecraft ever built in Europe. Manufactured by Alcatel Space of France, the satellite will be co-positioned at SES ASTRA's prime orbital position of 19.2¿ East.
Featuring 52 Ku-Band transponders and an expected lifetime of 13 years, ASTRA 1K sets a number of records for a civil communications satellite: 5.25 tons at lift-off; 13kW end-of-life power through 6-panel solar arrays; total span 37 meters; height 6.6 meters; 10 different antenna reflectors.
ASTRA 1K is furthermore the second in the ASTRA series to carry a 2 transponder Ka-Band payload with 1GHz of spectrum, which can be dynamically allocated to 16 different spot-beams covering greater Europe.
Mission 1: ASTRA 1K will provide replacement capacity for the satellites operating in the frequency bands used by ASTRA 1B, 1C and 1D, potentially replacing up to three existing ASTRA satellites.
Mission 2: geographic expansion of the ASTRA coverage into Central and Eastern Europe as well as the European part of the CIS, through Ku-band frequency re-use. This will provide for two separate spot beams, one focused on the Iberian peninsula, and one on Eastern Europe reaching as far as the Ural mountains.
Mission 3: The Ka-Band payload will offer enhanced broadband interactive applications to low-cost user terminals.
