T11, formerly known as DirecTV-11, is a Boeing model 702 satellite built by the

Boeing Satellite Development Center The Boeing Satellite Development Center is a major business unit of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. It brought together Boeing satellite operations with that of GM Hughes Electronics' Space and Communications division in El Segundo, Califo ...

. Its current name was adopted in 2017.

Technology

This satellite is functionally identical to T10 and is co-located with SPACEWAY-2 at or very near 99.225°W.

Launch data

T11 had originally been scheduled for launch by

Sea Launch Sea Launch was a multinational—Norway, Russia, Ukraine, United States—spacecraft launch company founded in 1995 that provided orbital launch services from 1999–2014. The company used a mobile maritime launch platform for equatorial lau ...

in November, 2007. Following a launch failure at Sea Launch that resulted in damage to the facility, the expected launch date was changed to March 19, 2008. Launch occurred at 22:47:59 UTC on March 19, 2008, and the spacecraft separated from the carrier rocket 61 minutes later, following a successful ascent.

Testing

Boeing handed over the T11 satellite to DirecTV on Monday, July 21, 2008, according to a press release on the Boeing website. This means that the satellite is "parked" at or extremely close to its final location of 99.225ºW. Customers with High-Definition receivers or High-Definition DVRs can see new satellite readings under the "Satellite Strength" menu on their receiver. T11 will show up as 99(a) or 99(b) for High-Def receivers and 99(c) and 99(s) for High-Definition DVRs.

Broadcasting to customers

T11 began broadcasting High-Definition channels to customers on July 31, 2008. Those first channels were

MPEG-4 MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related t ...

counterparts of the older

MPEG-2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, ...

channels DirecTV originally carried in the 70-79 channel range as well as four east coast distant network channels. Since the initial roll out of channels in July, DirecTV has added over 40 more HD channels to T11. These channels included converting some part-time regional sports networks to full-time HD channels as well as new national HD channels like

ABC Family The American cable and satellite television network that is now known as Freeform was originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service on April 29, 1977, and has gone through several different owners (and six different name changes) during its h ...

and Comedy Central, some premium channels, and HD pay-per-view. T11 now broadcasts over 50 HD channels, bringing DirecTV's total HD channel count over 130.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Directv-11 Communications satellites in geostationary orbit Spacecraft launched in 2008 Satellites using the BSS-702 bus Spacecraft launched by Zenit and Energia rockets Satellite television DirecTV