INTELSAT'S IA-7 SATELLITE HAS FAILED
Intelsat has declared IA-7 "a total loss" according to Ramu Potarazu, the Chief Operating Officer for Intelsat. They are not giving any reason for the failure as of yet. At approx 0222 EST Sunday 11.28.04, they had an electrical short of some kind on Bus 1 and eight minutes later lost telemetry to the spacecraft according to Intelsat engineer Kevin Maloy. There were no station-keeping maneuvers being done at the time, Maloy said. IA-7 was located at 129 degrees West longitude.
As of 1100 EST, ABSAT Ku transponders on IA-6 will NOT be affected. Early Sunday morning, it looked like ABSAT might lose IA-6 / K11 and K19 to restore protected customers from IA-7. That will not happen as of now. Intelsat bought space from PanAmSat on the Horizons 1 satellite to restore those customers.
IA-8 will launch in mid-December. It's currently slated to go to the 89 degree orbital slot (where Telstar 4 used to be), but Intelsat wouldn't say if that orbital would change because of this failure.
Intelsat's Ia-7 Satellite Has Failed
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