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New Skies Satellite Orbited by 150th Ariane Rocket
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 08:00 pm ET
16 April 2002
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The 150th Ariane rocket launched from the Guiana Space Center on Tuesday carrying the first Dutch commercial communications satellite. Equipped with four liquid-fueled strap on boosters, Arianespace's most powerful version of the Ariane 4 rocket lifted off at 7:02 p.m. EDT (2302 GMT) and successfully delivered NSS-7 into orbit for New Skies Satellites of The Hague, The Netherlands. Liftoff was delayed nine minutes because of short-lived trouble with the launch site's "measurements" system that came up just before the countdown was to enter its final automated sequence at T-minus six minutes. Although the four-year-old company already operates a constellation of five spacecraft, Tuesday's launch marked the first time the company was sending into orbit a brand new satellite it had procured from scratch. "This is an important event in New Skies corporate life," said Dan Goldberg, chief executive officer of the four-year-old company. "For a launch this important we were not going to trust this with anyone else but Arianespace." The Lockheed Martin-built spacecraft will be checked out and tested during the next few weeks before it is declared operational in about two months, officials said. Destined for an orbital slot of 338.5 degrees East longitude over the Atlantic Ocean, NSS-7 will replace the NSS-K and NSS-803 satellites already there. NSS-K will be retired while NSS-803 will be moved to a new spot over the Pacific Ocean."The launch of NSS-7 will allow us to add more advanced and higher-power capacity to two established orbital locations, positioning us as a leading provider of space-based communications services in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean regions for years to come," Goldberg said in a prepared statement. "With our expansion plans, we are building one of the youngest, most reliable and highly competitive global satellite fleets in the industry," he said. NSS-7 is to provide the usual range of satellite communications services including video distribution, Internet connectivity, corporate business networking and voice and data relaying capability. For Arianespace the launch marked the 69th success in a row for the Ariane 4, which has now launched 111 times in total. The company's next launch is targeted for May 3 when an Ariane rocket will carry the SPOT-5 spacecraft.
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