SES Astra announced that its Astra 5 satellite failed.
The bird, which operated at at 31.5 degrees East, experienced a technical anomaly leading to the end of the spacecraft’s mission, according to SES.
The company informed affected customers and switched a substantial part of the traffic to another Astra satellite at the 23.5 degrees East orbital position.
Service for German cable operators through their company KDL is among the transferred services. With this transfer, the economic impact of the incident on SES this year will not be material, the company stated
Teams of the Swedish Space Corp., the company that technically operates Astra 5A, and satellite`s manufacturer Thales Alenia Space, are now working on de-orbiting the satellite.
Together with SES, they are also investigating the root cause of the incident.
Astra 5A was positioned at the orbital position 31.5 degrees East and launched as Sirius 2 in November 1997 to the 5 degrees East position. SES Astra will shortly take the necessary decisions to maintain and develop the 31.5 degrees East orbital position in the changed fleet deployment scenarios, the compay anounced.