Eutelsat Communications has confirmed its decision to embark an S-band payload on the W2A satellite, for which the construction contract was awarded to Alcatel earlier this year.
Based on the Alcatel Alenia Space Spacebus 4000C4 platform, W2A's missions also comprise up to 46 transponders in Ku-band and 10 transponders in C-band. Designed with a lifetime of more than 15 years, W2A has a maximum launch mass of 5.7 tons and will deliver 11kW of payload power.
The state-of-the-art S-band payload at 2.2GHz on W2A will allow the delivery, for the first time, of mobile multimedia broadcast services directly to user terminals over France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain or the UK.
W2A's S-band payload will also enable other communications services for example, for security communications or crisis management.