The satellite, Yahsat’s second, was launched April 24 by an ILS Proton-M launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Yahsat 1B was built by Astrium and Thales Alenia Space and is considered to be the biggest satellite ever built in Europe. It is equipped with a commercial multi-beam Ka-band payload, which will be used to provide a variety of government and commercial applications, including YahClick, a satellite broadband service for the Middle East, Africa and South West Asia. Astrium and

   “Y1B will offer affordable, uninterrupted and high-speed satellite broadband Internet service for under-served communities across the region via our YahClick service. Now in its final position, controllers will spend the next several weeks testing every aspect of the satellite’s functionality before its systems are activated for Y1B’s duel commercial and civil missions,” Yahsat CEO Tareq Abdel Raheem Al Hosani said in a statement.