14 July 2022

Arianespace launched a brace of satellites to improve broadband coverage in the Asia-Pacific region on the Ariane 5 rocket’s first flight of 2022.

It lifted off at 5:50 p.m. Eastern from the Guiana Space Center spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, June 22, carrying Measat-3d for Malaysian operator Measat and GSAT-24 for India.

Both satellites separated from Ariane 5 and will use onboard propulsion to reach final positions in geostationary orbit.

Stéphane Israël, Arianespace’s chief executive officer, said the next Ariane 5 mission is scheduled for September 6 to launch Eutelsat’s Konnect VHTS satellite.

Measat-3d is due to replace two aging satellites for Measat, including one that started drifting out of its geostationary orbit slot in the middle 2021.

Europe’s Airbus Defence and Space built Measat-3d, which was designed to provide broadband speeds of up to 100 megabits per second in areas with limited or no terrestrial network throughout the whole of Malaysia.

In addition to supplying satellite broadband, the satellite aims to provide redundancy and additional capacity for video distribution in the Asia-Pacific region.

Indian space agency ISRO built GSAT-24 for its state-funded commercial arm NewSpace India Limited, which plans to use the satellite for telecoms and broadcast services in India.

This was the 113th overall mission for Ariane 5.