Successful launch of four O3b satellites expands fibre-like connectivity. Credit: Business Wire.|Décollage depuis le toit CDLS le 09/03/2018

Arianespace has launched four new O3b Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) communication satellites into space from Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.

The launch was conducted by an Arianespace’s Soyuz rocket on behalf of global satellite operator SES.

The launch flight VS18 lasted for around 2h 22min and saw the propulsion of Soyuz’ first three stages, as well as four burns of its Fregat upper stage. It represents the 18th flight operated by Soyuz from French Guiana.

“This was the fourth launch performed by Arianespace for our O3b fleet and we have yet another batch of O3b satellites planned for 2019.”

Built by Thales Alenia Space, the newly launched Ka-band satellites will allow SES to provide more capacity, as well as improved coverage, efficiencies, and carrier-grade services to telecommunications operators, mobile network operators, enterprises, internet service providers and government customers.

The satellites will join SES’ existing constellation of 12 MEO satellites. They are currently orbiting more than 8,000km away from Earth, approximately four times closer to Earth than geostationary-orbit satellites.

The O3b satellites have a liftoff mass of 700kg each.

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SES chief technology officer Martin Halliwell said: “This was the fourth launch performed by Arianespace for our O3b fleet and we have yet another batch of O3b satellites planned for 2019 on their Soyuz rocket as well.

“This is the beauty of our MEO constellation: it can easily be scaled to respond to demand in an agile manner, while beams can be allocated dynamically to where the demand is, and thus deliver low-latency connectivity where our customers need it.”

The next set of four O3b satellites is scheduled to be launched next year.