Spaceway
From WikiCover
On August 15, 2007, Hughes Network Systems announced that Spaceway 3 was successfully launched and placed into geostationary transfer orbit by Arianespace, setting the stage for Hughes to begin offering a new range of satellite broadband services to enterprise, consumer, and government customers throughout North America.
The Ka-band Spaceway 3 satellite lifted off at 7:44 p.m. EDT on August 14, 2007 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 ECA launcher. The rocket left the spacecraft in a geosynchronous transfer orbit at approximately 8:11 pm EDT. Boeing's Mission Control Center in El Segundo, California reported spacecraft acquisition at 1:30 am EDT this morning, when signals were received at the ground station in Hartebeesthoek, South Africa. Boeing reports that all systems are functioning properly.
Extensive tests will be completed after the spacecraft is maneuvered into a circular orbit 22,300 miles above the equator at 95 degrees West longitude. Hughes expects to begin commercial operations in early 2008.
The Spaceway system was designed and developed by Hughes as a next-generation, Ka-band broadband satellite system, the world's first commercial satellite to employ on-board traffic switching and routing capability. Combined with many other advances in satellite technology, such as 10 Gbps overall capacity, fast packet switching, and dynamic beam forming, the Spaceway 3 satellite ushers in a new world of bandwidth-on-demand satellite services with true site-to-site, single-hop networking of high-performance ground terminals. Spaceway 3 was built by Boeing and is based on the company's 702 satellite platform.