The first of Inmarsat’s newest generation of satellites (Countdown to Broadband), was launched today aboard an Atlas 5 by Lockheed’s International Launch Services.
The Inmarsat 4-series spacecraft transmit over 200 spot beams to deliver strong signals to the small receivers. Each craft has a giant unfurlable antenna reflector stretching 30 by 39 feet (BBC video).
The Inmarsat 4-F1 spacecraft, built in Europe by EADS Astrium, will provide Internet, email and other broadband capacity to laptop and palm-sized terminals on land, at sea or in the air.
The satellite will cover Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as well as the Indian Ocean. A sister satellite — Inmarsat 4-F2 — is supposed to fly later this year atop a Sea Launch rocket for South America, most of North America, the Atlantic Ocean and part of the Pacific Ocean. A third, F3, would cover the Pacific. All three satellites are identical and interchangeable - their coverage is programmable and can be reconfigured in orbit.
The satellites will support the new Broadband Global Area Network (B-GAN), for internet and intranet solutions, video on demand, video-conferencing, fax, e-mail, telephone and high-speed LAN access. Some transponders will also be leased to Seattle-based Tenzing, for broadband access on Airbus. Tenzing is in competition with Boeing’s Connexion for aircraft broadband.
About the size of a London double-decker bus and weighing about six tons, the satellite will now undergo a complex series of post-launch tests and manoeuvres before being fully deployed in geostationary orbit, above the Indian Ocean at 64 degrees East. With voice and LAN access at speeds up to 432kbit/s, Inmarsat should deliver far better videophone coverage from distant locations. SatSig has a Satellite Link Budget Calculator.
The International Maritime Satellite Organization (Inmarsat) was established in 1976 as an intergovernmental organization (IGO) for the development of a global maritime satellite system. Ownership interests in Inmarsat were held by each of the signatories to the Inmarsat treaty (typically the post, telephone, and telegraph ministries of the signatory countries). Inmarsat was transformed into a stock corporation in 1999 with the signatories becoming equity shareholders.
Gregg Swanson, Executive Director of Humaninet is now in Sumatra for tsunami relief. Over the past year, HumaniNet has assisted over 20 humanitarian and missionary organizations in procuring and testing a new way to communicate from remote areas.
This Inmarsat terminal makes it possible to get Internet access at a speed of 144 kps. The terminal weighs only 3.3 pounds, is reasonably rugged, and is well engineered. It is pictured here, connected to a laptop. An Iridium phone is shown to the right. To communicate by voice, a satellite phone such as Iridium is required, since RBGAN transmits and receives only data. |
Humaninet has lots of practical tips and inside knowledge using BGAN:
Usage fees are charged by the megabytes of data transmitted and received – currently less than $10 per megabyte. There is also a monthly access fee. This is economical for email messaging and transfer of medium-sized files, but not for extensive Web surfing. For example, a 1 kilobyte email costs one cent, and a 100 kilobyte file costs a dollar (US) to send or receive. For additional details on bandwidth fees, see our RBGAN Bandwidth Tips page.
A successful launch and insertion would be good news for the Satellite 2005 Conference, held March 22-25 in Washington DC with lots of exhibitors and Sessions. The String of Pacific Satellites Failures could be more than troublesome.
A private company, XTAR Communications is offering X-band services to government users in the United States, Spain, and other friendly and allied nations in early 2005. The X-band is only available to military users.
XTAR, a joint venture between Loral, which owns 56 percent, and HISDESAT, which owns 44 percent, operates a total of twenty 72 MHz transponders using the military’s X-band (7.90-8.40 GHz Uplink/7.25-7.75 GHz Downlink).
XTAR XTAR-EUR has 12 72-MHz transponders, two global beams, one fixed spot beam over Europe and four steerable spot beams. Its satellite footprint reaches from eastern Brazil to Singapore, including the Middle East and the entire African continent. In the fourth quarter of 2005, XTAR-LANT will carry eight 72-MHz XTAR transponders, two global beams, one fixed beam over the United States and three steerable spot beams. The XTAR-LANT footprint reaches from Saudi Arabia to Denver, CO.
XTAR alone cannot satisfy the U.S. Government’s SATCOM requirements, but it will significantly augment bandwidth in the government’s critical communication frequency, X-band.
The South Korean Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute ETRI is developing Ka-band mobile broadband satellite system supporting 100Mbps down and 10Mbps up (the MoBISAT project). It uses a a hybrid type of low profile reflector and active phased array.
Heavens Above can track LEO satellites on the web. Check the position of RadarSat-1 or stealth satellites like Misty. RADARSAT-2 launches later in 2005. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency overlays commercial satellite images with annotated infomation derived from classified military satellites.
Related DailyWireless stories include; Spot Beam Satellite Launched, Pacific Satellites Fail, Global Tsunami Warning System Announced, RadarSats Image Tsunami, Mobile Satellite Access, Stealth Satellites, Space Mist, Spot Beam Satellite Launches, Space Balls, Intelsat-7 Goes Dark, Rocket Welfare, WildBlue Launches, Spaceway Retrogrades, Rainbow1 + 802.16a?, Spaceway Retrogrades, Multiuser Satellite Access, C-SPAN Celebrates 25, MPEG-4: Satellite, Cable & Wireless, Sharing A Satellite Van, Satellite Wi-Fi, Chapter 11 in Space, Rupert’s World, Satellite News Gathering, NRO Rides Again, Stratellite, Sky High WiFi, Battle Blimps, Spot Beam Satellite Launched, Spaceway Retrogrades, Mars: Dead or Alive, Off Shore Data Links, Future Crimes: MATRIX, Unwired in Hawaii and The Global Grid.
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