spacetoday.net: Loral wins orders for new, refurbished spacecraft

Posted: Fri, Jan 5, 2007, 12:48 PM ET (1748 GMT)
SS/Loral 1300 satellite illustration (SS/Loral)

Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) announced this week that it has won a contract for a new communications satellite as well as refurbishing an already-built but unlaunched spacecraft for another customer. On Thursday SS/L reported that it had won an order from Telesat Canada for the Nimiq 5 satellite. The spacecraft, to be based on the 1300-series bus, will carry 32 Ku-band transponders to provide service across Canada. The spacecraft, to be located at 72.2 degrees west in GEO, is scheduled for launch in 2009. The deal, the first time Telesat Canada has bought an SS/L satellite, came less than a month after SS/L's parent, Loral Space and Communications, acquired a stake in the Canadian satellite operator. On Friday the company announced it had reached a deal with ProtoStar Ltd. to modify an existing satellite, ChinaSat-8, and deliver it to the company as ProtoStar 1. The refurbished spacecraft will provide C- and Ku-band services in the Asia-Pacific region. The spacecraft was originally built in the late 1990s for a Chinese customer, but remained in storage in the US for years because the US government would not grant an export license so that the satellite could be launched from China on a Long March booster. ProtoStar acquired the satellite from the original Chinese customers, China Telecommunications Broadcast Satellite Corporation and China National Postal and Telecommunications Appliances Corporation, last year. Launch of ProtoStar 1 is planned for 2008.