Arabsat 2B glitch

[Analoguesat]

Riyadh , Thursday, September 27th, 11:00 GMT -- ARABSAT, the Arab Satellite Communications Organization, announced that on Wednesday September 26th, at 13:30 GMT, its Arabsat-2B satellite has experienced a minor glitch that affected the pointing of the satellite. Within approximately 2 hours, the problem was corrected and the satellite recovered its nominal pointing.



Precautionary measurements made after its pointing recovery have demonstrated that the satellite is in perfect health, with all of its sub-systems running nominally. None of these systems suffered any physical or operational damage. The satellite is currently running with its primary equipment and no reconfiguration to redundant units was needed.



However, as a result of the recovery measures, the satellite experienced a drift from its nominal orbital location. The communications traffic of Arabsat-2B suffered various degrees of degradation and some services on the satellite have been affected.



Extensive efforts from Arabsat engineers are currently under way to bring the satellite back to its accurate 30.5°E orbital position and recover its full communications capability within hours. Customers equipped with auto-tracking features have already restored their services while others have been moved temporarily to other Arabsat satellites.



According to preliminary analysis gathered since the incident occurred, the interruption of services on Arabsat-2B has no impact on the performance of the satellite, whose 34 transponders in C- and Ku-band are all in perfect working order. A full investigation is being conducted by Arabsat in collaboration with the satellite manufacturer, in order to determine the specific reason for the anomaly.



Arabsat reaffirms its permanent commitment to always provide its customers with the highest possible level of services.

Arabsat press release