Washington, July 26 (ANI): Europe's largest and most sophisticated telecommunications satellite - Alphasat, was launched into its planned orbit on Thursday from Kourou, French Guiana.
The Ariane 5 ECA rocket, operated by Arianespace, took off at 19:54 GM, 21:54 CEST and delivered Alphasat into the target geostationary transfer orbit about 28 minutes later.
Alphasat's signal has been picked up by an Inmarsat ground station in Beijing as expected at 20:!38 GMT (22:38 CEST), confirming that the satellite is at the predicted location, powered up and transmitting.
Alphasat is a large telecommunications satellite primarily designed to expand Inmarsat's existing global mobile network.
It was engineered and built by Astrium through a public-private partnership between ESA and Inmarsat.
All the partners were present at Europe's Spaceport to watch the 6.6 tonne satellite take off.
Its advanced Integrated Processor, a core element of the commercial payload, is able to perform trillions of operations per second, providing unprecedented service flexibility. (ANI)
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