Spanish satellite operator Hispasat has defined a new designation system for its satellite fleet.
“The change comes as a response to the group’s growing number of satellites and orbital positions and reflects efforts to maintain designation coherency,” according to the coimpany.
“The company seeks to establish a logical method to automate future satellite designations and provide informative content regarding satellites’ position and age and, therefore, has established the following system: all satellites will use Hispasat as their primary name, to which complementary information will be added in reference to each satellite’s orbital position and their order of arrival. Hence, when a satellite changes its location, its designation will also change, adapting it to the satellite’s new orbital position.”
In establishing Hispasat’s new satellite designations, consideration has been given to the satellites that have already completed their useful life cycle and, therefore, been deorbited, such that numbering system will be linked to the history of the company’s satellites.
Excluded from this system will be satellites located at 61 degrees West, which will keep the name Amazonas, since they are fully established on the market and well-known by all of the actors in the sector. However, Hispasat will take the opportunity to reduce the designation Amazonas 4A to Amazonas 4, given the restructuring of the Amazonas 4B project into Amazonas 5.
When Hispasat’s capacity is aboard another operator’s satellite, as is the case for Intelsat 34, and authorisation is granted by that operator, the satellite will be redesignated in accordance with this new criterion, indicating the satellite’s original designation in parenthesis.
Thus, Hispasat’s active satellite fleet will be designated in the following way:
This change will also affect some of the satellites that are under construction, whose definitive designations will be the following:
The satellites at the 30 degrees West position operated by the company were originally called Hispasat, followed by the number 1 and a letter. When the rights of the 61º West orbital position were acquired, the satellites at this orbital position made up the Amazonas fleet. Hispasat Group can currently provide services at four other orbital positions (36º, 55.5º, 74º and 84º West), through their own rights or through agreements with other operators.
