Ariane 5 Fitted with its Japanese "Piggyback" Payload

KOUROU, French Guiana, Sept. 1, 2006/Satnews Daily/ ― A Japanese auxiliary payload for Ariane 5's next mission has been integrated with its launch vehicle hardware as preparations continue for Arianespace's upcoming heavy-lift flight.

Developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the LDREX-2 antenna demonstrator was installed on a ring-shaped platform designed to accommodate small supplemental payloads for Ariane 5 missions, according to Arianespace. This integration activity with the ASAP platform (Ariane Structure for Auxiliary Payloads) took place in the integration hall clean-room area that is part of the Ariane 5's Final Assembly Building at Europe's Spaceport.

LDREX-2 is designed to validate the deployment process for a large, lightweight antenna reflector that will be used on Japan's ETS-8 engineering test satellite.

The LDREX-2 is a 1/25th scale version of the full-size ETS-8 antenna, and the demonstrator will have a diameter of 6 meters when fully deployed during the Ariane 5 mission. In its stowed configuration on the ASAP platform, the auxiliary payload is 1.9 meters long and 60 centimeters wide.

Marie-Anne Luron, Arianespace's project manager for the LDREX-2 payload, said the subscale antenna reflector will deploy during the Ariane 5 mission in a multi-step process that takes approximately 45 minutes. The process will be commanded by Ariane 5's flight guidance and sequencing system, and data from the antenna's deployment is to be downlinked in real time to the tracking station in Malindi, Kenya.

The LDREX-2/ASAP combination will be at the base of the Ariane 5's payload "stack," and the deployment will occur after the separation of the mission's two primary passengers: Australia's Optus D1 telecommunications satellite, and the DirecTV 9S television broadcast spacecraft for DirecTV of the United States.

LDREX-2 occupies four of the eight mounting positions that are available on Ariane 5's ASAP platform: two are used for the antenna structure, while two more are filled by a pair of accompanying electronic units.

Once its deployment sequence is complete, LDREX-2 will be ejected from Ariane 5's upper stage, remaining in orbit for a period of time before the lightweight structure burns up in the atmosphere on reentry.

This is the second time that Arianespace has flown an LDREX experiment for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The initial antenna demonstrator was carried by an Ariane 5 in December 2000.

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