Ein the final countdown, then the horizon glows like sunrise. The earth is shaking. When masses of smoke and vapor begin to spread on the ground, the rocket has long since left and headed for space.
At 6:45 p.m. local time on Wednesday, the Ariane 5 heavy-duty launch vehicle lifted off from the spaceport in Kourou in French Guiana for the fourth last time. It successfully launched a satellite from the French company Eutelsat into earth orbit. On Tuesday, the start had to be postponed due to weather risks. Then on Wednesday nothing stood in the way of the spectacle in Kourou.
After just under two minutes, the rocket was only a tiny speck in the sky from the ground. The subsequent procedure went as planned: first the boosters were dropped at an altitude of 68 kilometers, then the rocket shed its payload fairing at an altitude of 111 kilometers.
After almost nine minutes, the 190-ton main stage had done its job and fell into the sea, where it is to be collected together with the other components. After half an hour, only the satellite remained and steered into its intended orbit at an altitude of several thousand kilometers. Now it was clear: the rocket launch had been successful.
Negotiations with Telekom & Co.
In all probability, it will take until the end of February for the 8.8 meter high geostationary telecommunications satellite, which is the largest ever launched by the Europeans, to complete its test phase and start work. It consists primarily of bringing high-speed Internet to remote regions of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The data transfer rate of Konnect VHTS is 500 gigabits per second.
This is a big leap forward for the operator Eutelsat, after the predecessor satellite Konnect, which took off two and a half years ago, only reached 45 gigabits per second. With Konnect VHTS one fights against the “digital gap”, said Eutelsat boss Eva Berneke. It is now up to the telecommunications companies to make the infrastructure usable for as many people as possible.
An agreement has already been reached with the major providers from France and Italy, Orange (formerly France Télécom) and Telecom Italia, Berneke explained, while negotiations are still ongoing with other providers. This applies to Deutsche Telekom, for example. It now has to decide whether to acquire the rights to use Konnect VHTS and make it available to its customers. In the case of the predecessor satellite Konnect, it did.
Eutelsat, which has been criticized for months for having only stopped broadcasting Russian channels with propaganda content via its satellites at the insistence of the French media supervisory authority and not on its own initiative, speaks of around half a million households in the 60 countries of the new satellite’s target region have so far been without fast internet.
“500 gigabytes per second is a breakthrough”
In the future, they will be able to use this to surf the Internet both at home and on the go at the same speed as households with a fiber optic connection – “cost-effectively”, as the Eutelsat boss emphasized, because the costly laying of cables with a satellite-supported infrastructure is no longer necessary. Travelers through these regions and European aviation and seafaring should also benefit from the satellite. The production costs are estimated to be in the mid three-digit million range, but are not known.
Konnect VHTS has manufactured with Thales Alenia Space, a French-Italian joint venture in which the technology company Thales holds two and the armaments manufacturer Leonardo one third of the shares. The construction period was almost four years. In August, the 6.4-ton satellite was shipped to French Guiana, refueled and integrated into the launcher before, after the dress rehearsal and preparation of the rocket, it was transferred from final assembly to the launch zone at the beginning of September.
