Amazonas 1 or Hispasat 55W-1 was a

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 Ear ...

based on the Eurostar 3000 satellite bus and owned by satellites operator

Hispasat Hispasat is the operating company for a number of Spanish communications satellites that cover the Americas, Europe and North Africa from orbital positions 30.0° West and 61.0° West. It was formed in 1989 and its activities include provisio ...

, based in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), an ...

, Spain. It was launched on 5 August 2004, with a launch mass of 4,5 ton, on a

Proton-M The Proton-M, (Протон-М) GRAU index 8K82M or , is an expendable Russian heavy-lift launch vehicle derived from the Soviet-developed Proton. It is built by Khrunichev, and launched from sites 81 and 200 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome i ...

Briz-M The Briz-K, Briz-KM and Briz-M (russian: Бриз-К, КM and M meaning ''Breeze-K, KM and M'') are Russian liquid-propellant rocket orbit insertion upper stages manufactured by Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center and used on ...

launcher to be located in the 61º W geostationary position. Amazonas 1 payloads were 36

Ku band The Ku band () is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in the microwave range of frequencies from 12 to 18 gigahertz (GHz). The symbol is short for "K-under" (originally german: Kurz-unten), because it is the lower part of the o ...

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 ...

that provided communications services in Europe and

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territor ...

, and 27 C band transponders that provided services in America. In 2013 it was relocated to the 36º W position and replaced by

Amazonas 3 Amazonas 3 is a communications satellite based on the SSL 1300 satellite bus and owned by the Hispasat Group of Madrid, Spain. It was launched by an Ariane 5 ECA launch vehicle on 7 February 2013, with a launch mass of 6265 kg. It will prov ...

. In March 2016, Hispasat announced that Amazonas 1 would be renamed as Hispasat 55W-1. Finally, the satellite was moved to a

graveyard orbit A graveyard orbit, also called a junk orbit or disposal orbit, is an orbit that lies away from common operational orbits. One significant graveyard orbit is a supersynchronous orbit well beyond geosynchronous orbit. Some satellites are moved int ...

and deactivated on 23 June 2017.

References

External links

Official website

Amazonas 1
Spacecraft launched in 2004 Communications satellites Communications satellites in geostationary orbit 2004 in Spain Satellites of Spain Satellites using the Eurostar bus {{Spain-spacecraft-stub