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China to Launch Second Satellite for Intersat
China's Great Wall Industries Corporation and Astrium of Europe signed an agreement Friday on the commercial launching of an Intersat satellite manufactured by the European company.
Under the agreement, APR-3, a synchronous-orbit telecommunications satellite owned by Intersat, will be launched from the Xichang Launching Center, in west China's Sichuan Province, by a Long March-3II rocket carrier in the spring of 2002.
It will be the second time that Intersat, an international satellite communications organization, chose Long March-3II as the launching vehicle, after a failed projection of an Intersat satellite in 1996, when both the rocket carrier and the satellite crashed shortly after the take-off.
Since then, Chinese experts have made many technical improvements based on studies on the accident. Since October 1996, the Long March family rocket carriers have succeeded in 23 launchings, including four projections carried out by the Long March-3II.
The APR-3, which has 30 KU-band transmitters, including six owned by Sinorsat, is expected to work for 12 years and will be positioned in a geostationary orbit 85 degrees east longitude, to cover China, Russia, India and the Middle East.
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