Kuala Lumpur – MEASAT Satellite Systems Sdn. Bhd. (MEASAT) is pleased to announce the successful lift-off of the LandLaunch launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan carrying the MEASAT-3a satellite into orbit.

Launched at 3.50 am Baikonur time (5.50 am KL time), the satellite is currently being lifted into orbit aboard the LandLaunch Zenit-3SLB launch vehicle on a 6 hours 25 minutes mission. After the completion of the mission, the satellite will be separated from the launch vehicle and acquired by control centers at the Orbital Sciences facility in Dulles, USA and at the MEASAT Teleport and Broadcast Center, CyberJaya, Malaysia. After extensive in-orbit testing, the satellite is planned to be commissioned into commercial operations by the end July 2009.

MEASAT-3a has been designed to expand capacity at MEASAT's key 91.5°E orbital location by 50 percent. With a 15 year mission, the satellite will provide an additional 24 transponders to the 48 transponders already provided by MEASAT-3. The new satellite has been designed to support the continued profitable growth of the Company's Direct-to-Home (DTH), Broadcasting and Telecommunications services.

Rate This Article

Excellent
Very Good
Good
Quite Good
Poor

  Rate This Article

Related Stories

India - a growth story - 1/3/2010

Talking to colleagues from India back during BroadcastAsia mid-2009, some were keen to play down the DTH growth story, saying that projections of its potential in India were being over-exaggerated. [...]

Satellites' leading lights - 1/3/2010

"We entered 2009 against the backdrop of the fiercest economic downturn in living memory from which the satellite industry, in general, and SES WORLD SKIES in particular, have so far only been margina [...]

'Hope for Haiti Now' on National Geographic Channel in Asia January 23 & 24 - 22/1/2010

Asia - National Geographic Channel is bringing 'Hope for Haiti Now,' a two-hour global earthquake relief telethon, to Asia for a commercial-free delayed broadcast in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and Taiw [...]