Spacebus™, a Vehicle for Broad Missions

Abstract

Alcatel Alenia Space’s Spacebus™, the multi-mission platform for geostationary communication satellites has come to a new degree of maturity with the successful in-flight results of the Spacebus™ 4000. The Spacebus TM product line includes now new features that will ease the design and accommodation of any broad-missions, broadband or broadcast. The most powerful version, the Spacebus™ C4 is the perfect vehicle for high power Ku-band payloads for HD-TV or multi-beam DTH applications or for large capacity broadband Ka-band payloads for multimedia applications or for multimedia broadcast mobile missions. The unique concept of dual deployment of long focal length and very large reflector antennas allows providing multi-beam coverage with high performances and fair frequency re-use from L-band to Ka-band. The middle range version, the Spacebus TM B2 is well adapted for standard missions such as 24 to 32 C/Ku-band repeaters for replacement or start of new business. It is also a good solution to test the market of Ka-band broadband services or S-band broadcast intermediate services. The paper details the Spacebus™ general architecture and performances. It reviews the new features and their benefits for examples of Ka-band broadband missions and S-band broadcast missions.