August 3, 2000, The Hague – New Skies Satellites N.V., the global satellite communications company, has signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for the construction of a new satellite to be located at 95 degrees East longitude. Designated NSS-6, this satellite will provide landmass coverage throughout Asia from the eastern Mediterranean in the West to Japan and Korea in the Far East.
The total program cost of $279 million covers the acquisition of a Lockheed Martin A2100AX satellite, an Arianespace launch, insurance, and in-orbit testing. Scheduled for launch by the fourth quarter of 2002, NSS-6 will begin commercial operation by the end of that year, providing a range of broadband multimedia services throughout Asia.
The satellite features six broad Ku-band beams covering India, China, the Middle East (including Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean) and South Africa, Australia, South East Asia, and North East Asia. Sixty high power 36 MHz-equivalent, transponders can be assigned flexibly among the six beams in response to market demand. Following extensive discussions with current and prospective New Skies customers, the beams have been shaped to meet the requirements of a wide variety of user groups, including Internet Service Providers (ISPs), multicasting entities, Direct-to-Home service providers, as well as corporate and other enterprise customers.
NSS-6 has a number of unique features optimized for Internet and broadband multimedia traffic. First, it includes 12 super-high-gain uplink spot beams in the
Ka-band, facilitating high data-rate transmissions from antennas as small as 90 cm directly from remote premises. These Ka-band uplink beams are then “cross-strapped”
to Ku-band downlink beams. This feature will permit ISPs and enterprise customers to bypass terrestrial communication systems and obtain fully-interactive access to high-speed Internet and other multimedia communications within or across service regions throughout Asia.
Second, because NSS-6 can flexibly allocate bandwidth differentially between outbound (requests for content) and inbound (content downloading) transmissions, it is particularly well-suited to carrying highly asymmetric Internet traffic. Additionally, NSS-6 features linearized travelling wave tubes for each channel, eliminating distortion while increasing power in multi-channel operations.
Finally, New Skies plans construction of teleport facilities within the NSS-6 footprint that will be interconnected by fiber to the European and U.S. Internet backbones. This will facilitate one-hop satellite communications from Europe and the U.S. to targeted markets in any one or combination of the six service regions within the satellite’s broad service area.
Also of interest to broadcasters, this one-hop capability will allow programming available on European satellites to be beamed directly to targeted Asian markets.
“NSS-6 is the first New Skies satellite specifically designed to offer interactive broadband multimedia communications,” said Bob Ross, Chief Executive Officer of New Skies. “This is the ideal satellite for the dynamic Asian market because it can rapidly and flexibly deploy capacity where it is needed as individual markets develop, from Johannesburg to Sydney and from Tokyo to Cyprus.”
About NSS-6
Orbital Location: 95 East.
Interconnectivity: Extensive intra-satellite interconnectivity makes it possible to uplink content from key aggregation points within one region for downlink in any of the other coverage areas.
On-Board Flexibility: The transponder capacity assigned to each beam can be increased or decreased throughout the satellite’s operational lifetime in response to shifts in demand and regulatory considerations. Up to 15 transponders can be assigned to each of the six beams.
Frequency re-use: Highly tailored and isolated beams maximize efficient spectrum use and satellite capacity.
Power: Payload power is 10 Kw throughout life.
Launch mass: 4,650 kgs.
Projected operational life: 14 years.
Launcher: Arianespace’s Ariane 4 or 5.
Ku-band: Through the use of multiple reflectors and shaped beams, NSS-6 provides uplink and downlink coverages tailored for specific markets and services. Each beam is generated from its own fixed antenna system, making it possible to offer high transmit and receive performance to the entire visible landmass. The satellite offers Ku-band EIRP of up to 52 dBW and G/T in excess of +5 dB/K over highly populated areas and target markets.
Ka-band: Each Ka-band uplink spot beam covers a geographical area of approximately 650 kms and delivers a receive G/T performance in excess of +14 dB/K. This allows broadband uplink access rates in excess of 1Mbps from 90 cm ground terminals.
About New Skies Satellites
Headquartered in The Hague, The Netherlands, New Skies Satellite N.V. is the only satellite operator based outside the United States with true global coverage. It is also the only operator that can offer Ku-band wide-area coverage of India, Southeast and Northeast Asia, Australasia, China, and the Middle East.
Owned by more than 180 major telecom entities from over 140 countries around the world, New Skies offers video, voice and data distribution, as well as fully-integrated Internet services and connectivity, world wide through its global network of five geostationary satellites. A sixth satellite, NSS-7, is already under construction and due for launch in late 2001. New Skies also has secured certain rights to use six additional orbital slots and related frequencies to expand its global presence.
About Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems
Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems markets, designs and builds geostationary and non-geostationary telecommunications and remote sensing satellites for customers worldwide. LMCSS is an operating unit of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, one of the core business areas of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Lockheed Martin has a 41-year heritage of building reliable spacecraft for commercial and military customers, having launched more than 875 spacecraft and clocking nearly 1,100 years of on-orbit performance experience.
-Ends-
Contacts:
Elizabeth Hess
New Skies Satellites
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Tel: +31 70 306 4133
Mob: +31 (0) 6 2906 2492
ehess@newskies.com
or
Jeffery Adams
Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems
Tel: +1 408 742 7606
Pager: +1 888 916 1796
Jeffery.adams@lmco.com
