Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) will add a government payload to Sirius 5, a satellite for SES (Euronext Paris:SESG) (Luxembourg Stock Exchange:SESG), currently under construction at the spacecraft manufacturing facility in California.

In addition to the primary payloads which will provide high performance coverage for Direct-to-Home broadcasting, broadband, point-to-point, and VSAT services in Europe and Africa, Sirius 5 will now also host a navigation payload for the European Union.

"The SS/L 1300 satellite platform is particularly well-suited to carry secondary payloads because of its size and power generation capability," said Martin Halliwell, President and CEO of SES Engineering.

"Sirius 5 was already designed to support multiple missions and the addition of the government navigation service provides a timely and cost-effective solution for the European Union."

The navigation payload is part of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), which is being developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission (EC).

The service is a precursor to Galileo, the full global satellite navigation system under development in Europe. It will augment the accuracy and reliability of signals from both the GPS satellite navigation system and the Russian GLONASS system.

With the addition of the EGNOS payload, Sirius 5 will operate in Ka-, Ku-, C- and L-band when it is launched in 2011. The payloads are supported by SS/L’s 1300 spacecraft bus, which provides the flexibility for a broad range of applications and is designed to serve for 15 years.