Eutelsat Communications has asked Thales Alenia Space to build a new satellite that maintains services at 10 degrees East beyond 2022.
Eutelsat 10B will be an all-electric satellite built on the Spacebus NEO platform. Its orbital slot will offer visibility spanning from the Americas to Asia.
It will carry two multi-beam HTS Ku-band payloads: a high-capacity payload, covering the North Atlantic corridor, Europe, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East, offering significant throughput in the busiest air and sea traffic zones, and a second payload to extend coverage across the Atlantic Ocean, Africa and the Indian Ocean.
The satellite’s HTS payloads will be able to process more than 50 GHz of bandwidth, offering a throughput of approximately 35 Gbps. The entire satellite payload will be digitally processed, offering capacity allocation flexibility thanks to a digital transparent processor.
Already multi-year capacity commitments have already been secured with several leading in-flight connectivity service providers. This represents more than one third of the incremental HTS capacity.
Eutelsat has maintained the 10 degrees East location since 1987.