![]() ![]() ![]() Instead, the project, backed by the Indonesian government, will support education and health centers, and thousands of public WiFi access points where citizens can connect to the internet with computers and smartphones. The new satellite will not provide internet service directly to individual users. The satellite is based on Thales’s Spacebus Neo spacecraft design, the company’s newest satellite bus which debuted in 2020. SATRIA was built by Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France, then transported to Cape Canaveral last month on a ship to begin final launch preparations. Why use a satellite? Because it’s impossible with fiber optic or microwave terrestrial technology.” “This satellite technology is the telecommunication network of last resort. “There are areas that are still blank spots,” said Danny Januar Ismawan, infrastructure director of Indonesia’s Telecommunications and Information Accessibility Agency. Artist’s illustration of the SATRIA satellite with its solar panels and Ka-band antennas deployed in orbit. Indonesia, the world’s fourth more populous country, has roughly 6,000 inhabited islands, exacerbating the challenge of building out a national infrastructure for internet connectivity. SATRIA, which stands for Satellite of Republic of Indonesia, will be operated by Satelit Nusantara Tiga, a subsidiary of the Indonesian satellite company PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara, or PSN.ĭuring its 15-year service life, SATRIA will provide internet service to rural hospitals, schools, and government buildings, focusing on areas where terrestrial fiber connections are unavailable. The SATRIA satellite will provide about 150 gigabits per second of communications throughout when it begins service around November. The satellite will open three antenna reflectors and activate its communications payload, consisting of 116 Ka-band spot beams. The ion engines will take several months to place the SATRIA satellite into its orbital position at 146 degrees east longitude, where its velocity will match the speed of Earth’s rotation, giving the spacecraft a fixed geographic coverage zone over the Asia-Pacific region. The upper stage deployed the SATRIA spacecraft nearly 37 minutes after liftoff. Ground teams were on standby to receive the first signals from the SATRIA spacecraft, which will unfurl solar panels to recharge its batteries, then use electric thrusters to maneuver into a circular geostationary orbit over the equator. A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Sunday with Indonesia’s SATRIA communications satellite. The Falcon 9 reached a top speed of 21,725 mph (34,963 kilometers per hour) with the final impulse from the upper stage engine, according to a telemetry display on SpaceX’s live webcast of the mission. The Falcon 9’s upper stage fired its engine two times to place the SATRIA spacecraft into an elliptical “super synchronous” transfer orbit ranging tens of thousands of miles above Earth. The reusable first stage of the rocket came back to Earth for landing on a drone ship 420 miles (680 kilometers) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. A few moments later, the Falcon 9 steered on a trajectory due east from Cape Canaveral and thundered into a mostly sunny late afternoon sky. The Falcon 9 ignited its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines in the final seconds of the countdown, then hold-down clamps opened to allow the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket to climb away from pad 40. The 4.6-metric ton (10,100-pound) spacecraft, known as SATRIA, lifted off atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:21 p.m. A Father’s Day launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral hauled into orbit a European-built communications satellite, the centerpiece of a nearly $550 million project to provide internet service to rural Indonesia. ![]()
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