SES ASTRA announced on 21 April that its new ASTRA 1KR satellite has been successfully launched into orbit. ASTRA 1KR roared into space onboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, last night at 16.27 local time – 22.27 CET. The satellite will now be brought into its final orbital position within the next weeks and will be made commercially available end of June 2006 after extensive in-orbit testing.
ASTRA 1KR will be located at 19.2° East, ASTRA’s prime orbital position for delivering broadcast services to Continental Europe, and will also transmit HDTV channels. With its satellite fleet ASTRA reaches 107 million homes in Europe.
We are very proud and satisfied that the ASTRA 1KR mission has been a success, said Ferdinand Kayser, President and CEO of SES ASTRA. ASTRA 1KR will benefit our customers, strengthen our unique inter-satellite back-up scheme and provide replacement capacity for our ASTRA 1B and ASTRA 1C satellites. The success of the ASTRA 1KR mission is a milestone in our company history and shows that we have strengthened the fruitful cooperation with our launch partners, Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems and International Launch Services.
This was an especially important mission for ILS and our customer, SES ASTRA, said ILS President Mark Albrecht. It was our 100th launch, as well as an opportunity to introduce a valued customer to the excellence of Atlas.
The pictures of the launch will be available under www.businesswire.com together with the related press release from ASTRA’s partner ILS.