Satellite first for Belarus

Belarus is set to launch its first communications satellite this Friday, January 15.

Known as Belintersat-1, it will be located at 51.5 degrees East and begin to provide services after three months of in-orbit testing.

Belintersat-1 will have 20 C-Band and 18 Ku-Band transponders, with four of the latter being 54 MHz rather than 36 MHz.

It will cover Europe, the Middle East, Africa and much of Asia.

Some capacity has already been pre-sold, including at least eight transponders to Chinese companies. Of these, five are for the African beam (C-Band), one for the Central African beam (Ku-Band) and two for the Global beam (C-Band).

Belintersat-1 has been developed with heavy investment from the Belarusian government and in partnership with a number of companies. They include Gilat Satellite Networks (Israel), iDirect (US) and China Satellite Communications Co.