SpaceX Launches Hispasat Amazonas Nexus Mission To Orbit

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched the Amazonas Nexus satellite for Spanish satellite operator Hispasat at 7:02 am Tuesday IST. Also onboard is a high-bandwidth protected communications transponder for the Space Force called Pathfinder 2.

The hosted payload is the third Pathfinder mission designed to use existing commercial technologies to provide wideband alternatives for the Space Force’s satellite communications needs.

The satellite built by Thales Alenia Space based on its Spacebus NEO platform will replace Amazonas 2 in the 61 degrees West orbital position.

The satellite features a digital transparent processor (DTP) allowing Hispasat to reconfigure its capacity to respond to changing market conditions. It is a Ku-band satellite, but it is also the first Hispasat satellite to also feature Ka-band capacity to optimize communications between the gateways and the satellite.

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Amazonas Nexus is designed to primarily provide high-throughput Ku-band capacity to Hispasat’s aviation, maritime, and rural broadband customers. The 4,500-kilogram satellite uses Ka-band feeder links for telemetry and control. It will cover all of the Americas, Greenland, and the North and South Atlantic corridors, for connectivity services in remote areas and for mobility services for aviation and maritime.

Hispasat has secured several commercial agreements for long-term leasing of transponder capacity aboard the satellite. Aviation broadband provider Gogo signed up for the project in January 2020 and Hispasat is also under contract to embed the United States Space Force’s 108-megahertz Pathfinder 2 on Amazonas Nexus.

The satellite separated from the rocket about 36 minutes later to begin its journey to geostationary orbit over the next few months using onboard electric propulsion.

It marked SpaceX’s 170th landing of an orbital class rocket, including Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions.

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