[11-29-07 – Satellite News] Satellite executives are looking to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Alphasat program to see if public-private partnerships can be effective means of developing new services and technology in the European space arena.
    The initiative is designed to develop a new platform capable of carrying a large communications payload, and Inmarsat will be the commercial operator for the project. Astrium Satellites signed a contract Nov. 23 with Inmarsat to develop an Alphasat 1-XL satellite that will support Inmarsat’s Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service. Inmarsat expects its investment in the satellite, which is scheduled to be launched in 2012, will be about 260 million euros ($386.1 million). ESA’s contribution is spread across different programs and totals about 440 million euros ($653.7 million), Paul Blythe, Alphasat project manager at ESA, said.
    “The significance [of Alphasat] is very high,” Blythe said. “This is the first major public-private partnership that ESA has engaged in that is now up and is running. … Without the backing of commercial players, ESA and national space agencies could not have done this mission.”
    Alphasat had three main goals, which Blythe believes have been achieved. “The first and the primary goal for it was to make sure we could get a flight opportunity for Alphabus, … so the fact that we have managed to secure a mission in a partnership with Inmarsat is a huge success,” he said.
    The second objective was to support the development of and fly an innovative communications payload, Blythe said. “With the Inmarsat proposed L-b and payload, some key technologies of which are already under development in the existing ESA Artes framework, this second objective was met as well. The third objective was that we wanted to give some opportunities to several subsidiary payloads, so that some of the other key technologies could be flown and these come from the technology demonstration payloads of which we currently have three and we will soon embark on a fourth.”
    In addition to the Inmarsat payload, Alphasat will also carry three ESA-provided technology demonstration payloads: an advanced star tracker using active pixel technology, an optical laser terminal for geostationary to low-Earth orbit communication at high data rates, and a dedicated payload for the characterisation of transmission performance in the Q-V band in preparation for possible commercial exploitation of these frequencies. A fourth demonstration for space environments and effects monitoring also is under discussion.
    The move to Alphabus also will benefit Thales Alenia Space and Astrium as they look to compete against U.S. satellite manufacturers, Blythe said. “It is clear that Boeing and Loral can provide platforms of significantly higher capabilities than the existing European platforms and certainly some of the new applications coming through seem to need these bigger capabilities,” he said. “The original idea for the Alphabus came from Thales Alenia Space and Astrium recognizing this need and addressing it to the agencies.”
Jean-François Charrier, head of marketing and institutional relations at Astrium said the deal was vital for the company. “We want to be present in the upper range segment of the market above our current platform capability,” he said. “It is the objective of the Alphabus development to position the European industry on the high end of the telecommunication satellite market. In terms of satellite and platform size, Alphasat is the biggest satellite Astrium will have ever manufactured.”
    The program also will allow Astrium to introduce new technology at the payload and platform level, Charrier said. “We’ve developed in particular a new generation of on-board processor, highly integrated and more sophisticated than was done on Inmarsat-4, with the capability to process a wider spectrum,” he said. “… There are also a number of other payload innovations such as new solid state power amplifiers and an active feed-array antenna that will provide payload flexibility enabling full coverage reconfiguration and flexible power allocation among the antenna beams as needed depending on where the traffic is. There are good technical challenges in this ambitious mission.”