SES to launch next four O3b satellites this week into medium orbit
SES’s medium-orbit satellite business O3b will be launching the next four of its satellites from French Guiana on Thursday.
The four new satellites will join SES’s existing constellation of medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites, orbiting at approximately 8,000km above the surface and serving customers based in almost 50 countries.
The O3b division of Luxembourg-based SES is designed to provide wholesale internet services to countries in the equatorial zone. The name stands for “other 3 billion”, the people not currently served by broadband internet connections. O3b is designed to provide fibre-like services, thanks to its closeness to Earth.
Because they are in such a low orbit the O3b satellites will have a round-trip latency much shorter than traditional geostationary satellites, which orbit 35,786km above the equator.
SES has more than 50 satellites in geostationary orbit as well as 16 in medium Earth orbit.
Thursday’s launch will be on a Russian-built Soyuz rocket from Sinnamary, a launch site owned by Arianespace on the coast of French Guiana. It is due at 16:30 UTC and will be broadcast on YouTube.
In 2021 SES is planning to begin launching a new fleet of MEO satellites, called mPower, designed to deliver “multiple terabits of throughput globally” to sea and land areas between 50° north and 50° south.
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