WASHINGTON — The ST-2 commercial telecommunications satellite built by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (Melco) of Tokyo suffered no damage from the earthquake and tsunami that has devastated Japan and will be shipped to South America in time for its scheduled May launch, a Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel) official said March 16.
Titus Yong, vice president and head of satellite programs at SingTel, said in an interview here at the Satellite 2011 conference that ST-2, which is owned by a joint venture of SingTel and Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom Co., will be shipped to Europe’s Guiana Space Center in French Guiana in about a week.
The 5,100-kilogram ST-2 represented the first non-Japanese customer for Melco’s DS2000 satellite platform. More recently, Melco booked a two-satellite order from Turkey.
ST-2 is scheduled for launch in May, along with India’s 3,150-kilogram GSAT-8/Insat-4G telecommunications satellite, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket operated by Europe’s Arianespace launch consortium.
