EUTELSAT 5 West B will serve video markets in Europe and North Africa, it will replace the EUTELSAT 5 West A satellite.
Eutelsat Communications has announced the safe arrival of EUTELSAT 5 West B at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it is due for launch on a Proton Breeze M rocket on September 30, overseen by International Launch Services.
Built by Airbus Defence and Space and Northrop Grumman, EUTELSAT 5 West B will serve video markets in Europe and North Africa from the key 5° West orbital position where it will replace the EUTELSAT 5 West A satellite, providing business continuity and improved service quality via a Ku-band payload of 35 equivalent 36 MHz transponders.
As part of a long-term agreement signed in 2017 with the European GNSS Agency (GSA), EUTELSAT 5 West B will also host the GEO-3 payload of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS), used to improve the performance of global navigation satellite systems such as GPS and Galileo.
