Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) has completed final testing on the SES New Skies NSS-9 commercial communications satellite. Orbital's engineering team completed all pre-shipment procedures late last week for the NSS-9 satellite, which will be stored at the company's Dulles, Virginia, facilities until the company is notified of the launch date. Orbital stated the spacecraft was designed, manufactured, and tested in approximately 22 months, from the start of the contract to the completion of the pre-shipment review. Based on Orbital's STAR-2™ satellite bus, NSS-9 carries 28 active C-band transponders and features three beams that can be interconnected on a transponder-by-transponder basis: a global beam providing coverage of the entire earth visible from its 183° E longitude orbit slot, another beam covering Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Korea and the Pacific Islands, and a third beam providing coverage and connectivity to the U.S., Hawaii and Polynesia. Excluding NSS-9, Orbital currently has ten other commercial communications satellites in various stages of design and production for launches between 2009 and 2010. Two additional Orbital-built GEO satellites were launched this year, THOR-5 for Telenor of Norway and AMC-21, the first of five satellites ordered by SES Americom.