Airbus Beluga delivers Inmarsat-6 F2 satellite to Florida for launch

The Inmarsat-6 geostationary telecommunications satellite (I-6 F2), built by Airbus and due to be launched in February, has been delivered at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The satellite was transported to Florida on board an Airbus Beluga aircraft.

François Gaullier, Head of Telecommunications & Navigation Systems at Airbus, said: “I-6 F2, with its sophisticated digitally processed payload, will join Inmarsat-6 F1 (I-6 F1) in orbit giving Inmarsat even more flexibility, capability and capacity.

“This is the 10th geo-telecommunications satellite we have built for our long-term customer Inmarsat, a leading provider of global mobile satellite communication services, and with I-6 F1 the satellites will enable a step change in the capabilities and capacity for their ELERA services, and deliver significant additional capacity for their Global Xpress network.”

The satellites will enhance Inmarsat’s ELERA L-band and Global Xpress Ka-band networks respectively for customers across land, air and sea and are the next step in the company’s plans for the world’s first multi-dimensional network, Inmarsat ORCHESTRA.

According to Airbus, the I-6 F1 and I-6 F2 feature a large 9m aperture L-band antenna and six multi-beam Ka-band antennas. They carry new-generation modular digital processors to provide full routing flexibility over up to 8,000 channels and dynamic power allocation to over 200 spot beams in L-band per spacecraft. The Ka-band spot beams are steerable over the full Earth disk with flexible channel-to-beam allocation.