Alphasat, Europe’s largest-ever telecom satellite, during testing at Intespace in Toulouse, France.  Image credit: ESA

[Satellite TODAY 08-06-13] Inmarsat announced that Alphasat, a technically advanced telecommunications satellite, has successfully reached its temporary post in geostationary orbit. Alphasat was launched on an Ariane 5 ECA launcher from French Guiana on July 25.

Throughout the past few days, the satellite has successfully achieved a number of additional milestones. These include the boost of the spacecraft into geostationary orbit and the deployments of the four-panel solar array and its L-band reflector. In an operation lasting more than 24 hours, the reflector was released from the satellite and unfurled slowly to its final diameter of 11 meters.

Alphasat will remain in its current orbit for several weeks while Inmarsat, together with the European Space Agency (ESA), continue in-orbit testing. This will include testing of all AlphaBus platform subsystems and the commissioning of its digital processing L-band payload, in addition to the spacecraft’s four Technology Demonstration (hosted) Payloads (TDP).