OTTAWA – Telesat announced the successful launch of its new Telstar 12 Vantage satellite Wednesday from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.
Telstar 12 Vantage replaces and expands on Telesat’s Telstar 12 satellite. Operating from Telesat’s prime orbital location of 15 degrees West, the new bird will utilize a combination of broad regional beams and high throughput spot beams to increase capacity and offer superior performance for broadcasters as well as enterprise networks on the ground, in the air and at sea, reads the news release. The satellite will use Ku-band for all customer services assuring backward compatibility with existing Ku-band terminal equipment.
In other company news, Telesat said that it has selected Space Systems Loral (SSL) to build its new high throughput satellite, Telstar 19 Vantage, expected to launch in 2018.
As Cartt.ca reported earlier this month, Telstar 19 Vantage will have two high throughput payloads, one in Ku-band and the other in Ka-band, and will be co-located with Telesat’s Telstar 14R satellite at 63 degrees West.
“Telstar 19 Vantage is a state-of-the-art, high throughput satellite optimized to serve growing markets in the Americas,” said Telesat president and CEO Dan Goldberg, in the news release. “We are pleased to again be working with SSL, a longstanding technology partner for Telesat, and excited to be augmenting our prime orbital position at 63 degrees West with additional HTS capacity to serve Latin America, Northern Canada and mobile broadband requirements in the Caribbean and North Atlantic, all markets where we have a leading position today.”
