On the night between Friday and Saturday (Israel time), Arianespace carried out a successful Friday launch this year using the Ariane 5 rocket and put into orbit two new commercial communication satellites
The Ariane 5 GS rocket launched the RASCOM-QAF1 and Horizons-2 communication satellites during a flight that lasted 32 minutes. With the completion of the mission, Arianespace celebrates the fact that it launched 80% of all commercial satellites this year. See more about the project and the satellite in the following review.
First, the Ariane 5 was launched into orbit with the African communications satellite RASCOM-QAF1 at the twenty-eighth minute from the start of the mission. RASCOM-QAF1 is the first pan-African communication satellite and is manufactured at the Thales Alenia Space factories. Its weight is 3,200 kg and it includes 12 receivers in the Ku- range and eight receivers in the C range. The planned lifetime of the satellite is 15 years.
The communication satellite Horizons-2 was launched by Ariane 5 in the thirty-second minute from the beginning of the mission. It weighs 2,300 kg and is manufactured by Orbital Sciences Corporation. The satellite will be operated by the Horizons 2 Satellite LLC corporation, which is jointly owned by the Japanese satellite companies Intelsat and JSAT. Balvin 20 responders in the Ku field and will provide communication and broadcasting services to the USA and Canada..
Arianespace ends the year 2007 particularly strengthened in light of the success of almost all the launches it carried out this year and when it verified orders for twenty-four additional launches of commercial communication satellites using the Ariane 5 rocket (and possibly also using the Soyuz rocket for smaller payloads), and in addition orders for eleven institutional launches using a rocket Ariane 5 and additional launches using a Soyuz rocket (two of which will be carried out by the Starsem company from Baikonur in Kazakhstan and six more from the new center in French Guiana).
