PARIS — Europe’s Arianespace consortium will launch the Intelsat New Dawn satellite in late 2010 aboard either a heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket as a secondary passenger or as the sole satellite aboard a Russian Soyuz vehicle operated from Europe’s equatorial spaceport under a contract announced April 14 by Evry, France-based Arianespace.

New Dawn, which is being financed through a joint venture between Washington- and Bermuda-based Intelsat and a South African investor group led by Convergence Partners, is expected to operate at 33 degrees east longitude with 28 C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders. The satellite will be used to provide video, broadband and cellular-backhaul services in Africa.

New Dawn is under construction by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., and is expected to weigh about 3,000 kilograms at launch — which is about the maximum payload that can be carried into geostationary transfer orbit by a Soyuz vehicle operating from Europe’s Guiana Space Center in French Guiana.

A Soyuz launch pad is under construction at a new complex in French Guiana. The Russian vehicle is scheduled to make its inaugural flight from the facility either late this year or early in 2010.

Peter B. de Selding was the Paris bureau chief for SpaceNews.