Arianespace has announced that the last Ariane 5 fight for this year has been rescheduled to December 28, allowing one of the mission’s customers to perform complementary checks on its payload.
This launch from the Spaceport in French Guiana will mark Ariane 5’s sixth dual-passenger flight of 2010 and is to carry the Hispasat 1E and Koreasat 6 telecommunications satellite payloads. The launch window will be from 09:26 pm to 10:15 pm GMT, on Tuesday December, 28. The originally scheduled date was December 21.
During activity at the Spaceport this month, Hispasat 1E underwent the fit-check, during which its integration was validated with the cone-shaped adapter that serves as the interface between payload and launcher.
Hispasat 1E was built by Space Systems/Loral, and is a Ku-band spacecraft for Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) and Broadcast Satellite Services (BSS). It is designed to provide capacity for the new initiatives of Spanish-based Hispasat, which includes direct-to-home television; digital terrestrial television; HD television; along with value-added broadband services in mobile, land and maritime environments.
The Koreasat 6 spacecraft was produced by an industry team of Orbital Sciences Corp. and Thales Alenia Space for the KT Corporation of the Republic of Korea. This spacecraft carries 24 Ku-Band channels to provide Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) and six channels for Direct Broadcast Services (DBS).
