EUTELSAT 5 West B is announced, bad expectations

[VodzigorLans]

Ok, first.

EUTELSAT 5 West A’s C-band mission, serving mainly data customers in Sub-Saharan Africa, will be discontinued.

WTF?! Really?
Second,

Through an improved match of the satellite’s coverage with specific customer requirements at 5° West savings will be achieved in power requirements and hardware

Read a full announcement here Eutelsat selects Airbus Defence and Space and Orbital ATK to build replacement video satellite for 5° West neighbourhood

What do you think?

 

[Adam792]

Hmm sounds like we could be waving goodbye to Italian multistream on a smallish dish here in the UK!

Different beams for each of the three service areas are talked about, (the Algerian channels are already on a steerable beam on 5WA).


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[Analoguesat]

Unfortunately multi targetted beams are the way forward for the satellite operators - and will become increasingly common as the birds launched 10 years ago or more start coming out of front line service.

The C-band payload being dropped from 5W is just a cost saving measure - the satellite can be made smaller if it doesnt need a whacking great C-band reflector, which is consequently cheaper to launch. The current occupants will probably be shunted round to 8W which seems to have fairly low utilisation of the C-band payload.