Horizons-1, also known as Galaxy 13, is a geostationary

communications satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth ...

operated by Intelsat and

SKY Perfect JSAT The SKY Perfect JSAT Group is a Japanese corporate group that claims to be Asia's largest satellite communication and multi-channel pay TV company. It owns the SKY PerfecTV! satellite broadcasting service and the SKY Perfect Well Think content s ...

(JSAT) which was designed and manufactured by

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and p ...

on the

BSS-601 The Boeing 601 (sometimes referred to as the BSS-601, and previously as the HS-601) is a communications satellite bus designed in 1985 and introduced in 1987 by Hughes Space and Communications Company. The series was extremely popular in the 199 ...

platform. It has K_u-band and C-band payload and was used to replace Galaxy 9 at the 127.0° West longitude. It covers North America,

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...

and

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

Satellite description

The spacecraft was designed and manufactured by

on the

satellite bus A satellite bus (or spacecraft bus) is the main body and structural component of a satellite or spacecraft, in which the payload and all scientific instruments are held. Bus-derived satellites are opposed to specially produced satellites. Bus- ...

. It had a launch mass of and a mass of at the beginning of its 15-year design life. When stowed for launch, it measured of height and on its sides. Its solar panels span when fully deployed and, with its antennas in fully extended configuration it is wide. It had two wings with four solar panels each that used dual-junction GsAs solar cells. Its power system generated 9.9 kW of power at beginning of life and 8.9 kW at the end of its design life and had a 30-cell

NiH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

battery for surviving solar eclipse. Its propulsion system was composed of an R-4D-11-300 LAE with a thrust of . It also had twelve

bipropellant The highest specific impulse chemical rockets use liquid propellants (liquid-propellant rockets). They can consist of a single chemical (a monopropellant) or a mix of two chemicals, called bipropellants. Bipropellants can further be divided into ...

thrusters for station keeping and

attitude control Attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of an aerospace vehicle with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, etc. Controlling vehicle ...

. For North-South stationkeeping, its primary method was an

electric propulsion Spacecraft electric propulsion (or just electric propulsion) is a type of spacecraft propulsion technique that uses electrostatic or electromagnetic fields to accelerate mass to high speed and thus generate thrust to modify the velocity of a sp ...

system with four XIPS 13, with four of the chemical thrusters acting as backup. It included enough propellant for orbit circularization and 15 years of operation. It had two Gregorian antennas and two gridded shaped antennas. Its K_u-band payload is composed of twenty four active plus eight spares 36 MHz

transponders In telecommunications, a transponder is a device that, upon receiving a signal, emits a different signal in response. The term is a blend of ''transmitter'' and ''responder''. In air navigation or radio frequency identification, a flight tran ...

TWTA A traveling-wave tube (TWT, pronounced "twit") or traveling-wave tube amplifier (TWTA, pronounced "tweeta") is a specialized vacuum tube that is used in electronics to amplify radio frequency (RF) signals in the microwave range. The TWT belongs t ...

with an output power of 108 watts. It covers North America, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico and is known as Horizons-1. The C-band payload had another twenty four plus eight spares 36 MHz transponders powered by 40 watts TWTA. It covers North America, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico and is known as Galaxy 13, which was used to replace Galaxy 9.

History

Horizons Satellite was originally an equal share

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and economic risk, risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four rea ...

with

PanAmSat The former PanAmSat Corporation founded in 1984 by Reynold (Rene) Anselmo, was a satellite service provider headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, United States. It operated a fleet of communications satellites used by the entertainment ind ...

. On 4 September 2001, it ordered from

its first satellite, Horizons-1 / Galaxy 13. It was a spacecraft with 24 C-band and 24 K_u-band

. It had a 10 kW power generation capacity and 15 years of expected life. On the same day of the satellite order, Boeing disclosed that it had received a parallel contract from PanAmSat, where the latter had exercised an existing option to launch Horizons-1 from its

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 ...

subsidiary. It was successfully launched on 1 October 2003 at 04:03:07 UTC, aboard a

Zenit-3SL The Zenit-3SL is an expendable carrier rocket operated by Sea Launch. First flown in 1999, it has been launched 36 times, with three failures and one partial failure. It is a member of the Zenit family of rockets, and is built by the Yuzhnoye ...

rocket from the

Ocean Odyssey LP ''Odyssey'' is a self-propelled semi-submersible mobile spacecraft launch platform converted from a mobile drilling rig in 1997. The vessel was used by Sea Launch for equatorial Pacific Ocean launches. She works in concert with the assembly ...

platform stationed at the 154.0° West over the Equator in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

. 100$ present. In late 2005, PanAmSat was taken over by Intelsat who continued the joint venture.

References

{{Orbital launches in 2003 Communications satellites in geostationary orbit Satellites using the BSS-601 bus Spacecraft launched in 2003 Satellites of Japan Intelsat satellites