Airbus’ latest next-generation geostationary Eurostar Neo satellite Arabsat BADR-8 has been shipped to Cape Canaveral, ready for launch. The satellite will provide connectivity over Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia and also features a world first Airbus’ innovative space demonstrator TELEO to provide space-to-ground optical communications at gigabit speeds.
Airbus’ relationship with Arabsat stretches back 20 years, and BADR-8 is the eighth satellite built for the leading satellite services provider in the Arab world.
The Airbus TELEO demonstrator will be used to validate technical scenarios and innovations for GEO to ground communications of the order of one terabit per second.
This TELEO demonstrator will also enable very high capacity optical feeder link communications, by nature highly robust against jamming, as part of the development by Airbus of a new generation of optical communications technology in space.
Arabsat’s BADR-8 satellite features increased payload capacity and more efficient power and thermal control systems and will replace and increase Arabsat’s capacity and augment its core business at the BADR hotspot 26°E in geostationary orbit.
The state-of-the-art Airbus Eurostar Neo Arabsat BADR-8 satellite features electric orbit raising technology and is the third Airbus Eurostar Neo satellite to be launched.
BADR-8 has been designed to remain in service in orbit for more than 15 years. The satellite has a launch mass of around 4.5 tons and it will deliver 17.8 kW of payload power. The satellite was transported to Florida on an Antonov An124.
Airbus’ Eurostar Neo platform has been developed in the frame of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Partnership Projects, together with the French space agency CNES, and strongly supported by the UK Space Agency and other agencies across Europe.
Airbus’ geostationary telecommunications satellites have clocked up more than 1,300 years of successful operation in orbit and are in service, or being built, for all of the world’s leading geostationary satellite operators.