[SatNews] Moving right along...

The ASTRA 2F satellite, designed and manufactured by Astrium for the satellite operator SES, has left Astrium’s facility in Toulouse, where it had undergone its final integration and test campaign. ASTRA 2F will now be transported to Kourou, French Guiana, in preparation for its launch by an Ariane 5 vehicle at the end of September 2012.

ASTRA 2F will enable the delivery of next generation broadcast and broadband services in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and will carry Ku- and Ka-band payloads at the prime orbital location of 28.2 degrees East.

As prime contractor for ASTRA 2F, Astrium, Europe’s leading company for space technologies, has supplied both the payload operating in Ku- and Ka- frequency bands and the Eurostar E3000 platform. ASTRA 2F will have a launch mass of 6,000 kg, a wingspan of 40m once its solar arrays are deployed in orbit, and a spacecraft power of 13kW at the end of its 15-year design lifetime. Launch and Early Orbit Phase operations will be conducted from the Astrium spacecraft control centre in Toulouse.

ASTRA 2F will be the fifth Eurostar satellite in the SES fleet, following the successful launch of ASTRA 1N in August 2011. ASTRA 2F will also become the 28th Eurostar E3000 in orbit, with Astrium’s Eurostar series accumulating more than 400 years of successful in-orbit operations, of which more than 100 years have already been achieved by the latest Eurostar E3000 version.

ASTRA 2F is the first in a series of four ASTRA satellites ordered simultaneously in late 2009 and scheduled for launch in several steps between 2012 and 2014. The second, ASTRA 2E, is already assembled and is undergoing final testing in Toulouse. The two other satellites in the series, ASTRA 5B and ASTRA 2G, are at earlier stages of production, as is also SES-6, a fifth satellite subsequently ordered by SES.