SES Americom, an SES Global Company, today conducted its last operations on the GSTAR-4 satellite, safely de-orbiting the satellite more than 250 km beyond the geosynchronous orbital belt. The Series 3000 spacecraft was built by GE ASTRO SPACE, now Lockheed Martin, with a design-life of 8.5 years.
The satellite provided Ku-band CONUS services for more than 13 years, exceeding its expected service life by more than 150% due to efficient management of on-board fuel. “GSTAR-4 was a valuable spacecraft in our fleet and provided consistent services to a great variety of customers … from broadcasters to government agencies … from a national gas retailer to a university.
It’s a great reflection on the quality of the spacecraft as well as the quality of the team that operated it that we could depend on it for so long. We have three more Series 3000 spacecraft in our fleet, Satcom C3, Satcom C4, and Spacenet-4, which have all proven to be flexible and resilient satellites,” said Dany Harel, SES Americom Vice President, Space Systems and Operations.
GSTAR-4 was manufactured for GTE Spacenet, a VSAT services company acquired by GE Americom in 1994. Launched on an Ariane 42P from the spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on November 20, 1990, the satellite featured a sixteen 54-MHz transponder Ku-band payload serving CONUS, Alaska and Hawaii.
Considered medium-powered for its generation, the satellite operated from 125 degrees West longitude from 1990 to 1992, when it was transferred to 105 degrees West and has operated in inclined orbit since 2002.
The satellite’s primary Tracking, Telemetry and Control operations were performed at Americom’s Satellite Control Center at Woodbine, Maryland. GSTAR-4 shared its launch vehicle with Americom’s Satcom C1 satellite, currently operating at 37.5 degrees West longitude. In the long service history of the spacecraft, its customers included government agencies, Turner Broadcast Systems, a variety of private VSAT networks, radio programmers, a university, and GE Plastics.
