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DirecTV’s Spaceway Satellite Arrives at Sea Launch Home Port |
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ST. LOUIS, March 18, 2005/Satnews Daily/ — Boeing [NYSE:BA] and the DirecTV Group, Inc. [NYSE: DTV] said on Thursday Spaceway F1 satellite has arrived at the Sea Launch home port in Long Beach, Calif. where it will undergo final preparations for a late April launch aboard a Zenit-3SL vehicle.
Built on Boeing 702 model satellite, Spaceway F1 is the first of two spacecraft scheduled for launch this year for DirecTV. The spacecraft includes a flexible payload with a fully steerable downlink antenna that can be reconfigured on orbit to seamlessly address market conditions.
"We look forward to working with DirecTV and Sea Launch as Spaceway F1 continues through final testing and integration with the Zenit launch vehicle," said Dave Ryan, vice president and general manager of commercial and civil satellite programs at Boeing.
Spaceway F1 is one of four Boeing-built Ka-band satellites DirecTV has scheduled for launch over the next three years as part of a historic expansion of programming capacity. The expansion will enable DirecTV to deliver more than 1,500 local and national High Definition channels and other advanced programming services to consumers nationwide by 2007.
The Boeing 702 spacecraft was manufactured by Boeing's Satellite Development Center at the company's one-million-square-feet satellite manufacturing, integration and test complex in El Segundo , Calif.
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