Airbus was tapped by satellite operator MEASAT Global Berhad to build a new, multi-mission telecommunications satellite — MEASAT-3d — to replace capacity and augment its core business in Malaysia and across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. To be collocated with MEASAT-3b, also built by Airbus, the new communication unit is intended to improve performances and progressively to replace MEASAT-3 and MEASAT-3a, in support of the premium DTH (direct-to-home) video distribution effort in Asia.
Dr Edmund Kong, MEASAT’s Chief Technology Officer said: “Collocated with MEASAT-3a and MEASAT-3b at 91.5°E, MEASAT-3d will serve the growth requirements of 4G and 5G mobile networks in Malaysia while continuing to provide redundancy and additional distribution capacity for video in HD, 4K and ultimately 8K in the Asia-Pacific region.”
MEASAT-3d is based on the Airbus Eurostar E3000 satellite platform. It will launch in 2021 and will operate for more than 15 years, with e an electrical power of 12kW.
The new satellite will provide C and Ku-bands capacity for DTH, video distribution, and telecommunication services.
The new HTS Ka-band mission features multiple user spot beams optimized to deliver high speed broadband communications over Malaysia to bridge the digital divide in the country.
It also will carry an L-band navigation hosted payload for the Korea Augmentation Satellite System (KASS) for KTSAT.
“There are already 46 E3000 satellites operating successfully in orbit and Airbus is committed to providing innovative and ‘best-in-class’ satellite solutions to enable MEASAT to be the operator of choice in the region,” according to Arnaud de Rosnay, who leads Telecom Satellites for Airbus.
