Luanda – The Government of Angola announced this Tuesday the launch of the Angolan AngoSat-2 satellite into orbit on 12 October of the current year in Baikonur City of Kazakhstan.
The announcement was made by the minister for Telecommunications, Information Technologies and Media, Mário Oliveira, during the opening of activities in the scope of the World Space Week, which is observed from 4 to 10 October in over 95 nations, since 06 December 1999, declared by the United Nations General Assembly.
This is a government project aiming to reduce digital exclusion of Angola and the continent, making it possible to expand telecommunications services to the most remote areas of the country at competitive prices.
Mário Oliveira explained that the satellite includes a series of services, covering the African continent, with greater emphasis on the southern region, and a significant part of southern Europe.
Angosat-2 has a transmission capacity seven times greater than the first device, which had 16 transponders in C Band and six in KU Band.
Angosat-2 will also have six transponders in the C Band, 24 in the KU Band and, as a novelty, one transponder in the KA Band.
With a total weight of two tonnes, Angosat-2 is a High Transmission Rate (HTS) satellite and will provide 13 gigabytes in each illuminated region (zones within reach of the satellite´s signal). The satellite will be based on the Eurostar-3000 platform and will have 15 years of lifetime.
Angosat-2 began construction on 28 April 2018 at Airbus company´s facility in France, where all the satellite's payload was installed, all the components that will enable it to operate.
The structure was then transferred to the ISS Reshetnev factory in the “closed” city of Zheleznogorsk, near Krasnoyarsk in the Siberian region, where the casing was produced and the starter mechanism was installed. It was followed by the transfer to the launch site, at the Baikonur aerospace station in Kazakhstan, from where it will leave for space orbit.
The minister pointed out that the satellite´s main focus is the expansion of telecommunication services, such as Telemedicine, Remote Work, based on the internet service that it is capable of exporting.
According to Mário Oliveira, African countries, especially those part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have already been contacting regarding taking advantage of AngoSat.
He said Angola is leading the sharing of SADC satellites and within that context is working to present Angosat-2 in the countries of the region.
The AngoSat-2 satellite was launched with the mission of replacing Angosat-1, the first Angolan satellite, which was launched into orbit on 26 December 2017, but has since faced problems.
After its launch there was a primary loss of contact due to a error in the satellite´s subsystem power right after it was launched into orbit, although communications were recovered, there were problems with the satellite´s power supply.
