Displaying items by tag: Alphabus

Alphabus is the name given to a family of heavy geostationary communications satellites. 

Alphabus is developed by a joint venture between Thales Alenia Space and EADS Astrium Satellites in France, with support of the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), the French space agency and the European Space Agency (ESA). The Alphabus platform is designed for communications satellites with payload power in the range 12-18 kW. Satellites based on Alphabus will have a launch mass in the range 6 to 8 tonnes, 40% more than the most powerful Spacebus 4000.

Alphasat is the first satellite designed with this platform.

Alphasat is a European telecommunications satellite designed with the Alphabus platform.

Inmarsat awarded a contract to EADS Astrium Satellites for a first use of the platform Alphabus. The satellite is named Alphasat I-XL, and will augment Inmarsat's Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service. The satellite will support a new generation of mobile technologies and enable communications across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

It was launched on 25 July 2013. At launch date it was one of the biggest geostationary telecom satellites.