Eutelsat is a French satellite operator that provides coverage over the entire European continent, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, as well as the Americas. It is the world's third-largest satellite operator that manages a fleet of 36 satellites which broadcast nearly 7,000 television stations and 1,100 radio stations to over 274 million homes around the world.
On November 3rd, SpaceX launched the second Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G satellite with a flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket. The launch comes after the company launched Eutelsat's HOTBIRD 13F satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit on October 15. The previously-flown rocket lifted off on Thursday at 1:22 a.m. ET from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying the HOTBIRD 13G telecommunications satellite to orbit.
The Falcon 9 first-stage booster supporting this mission is identified as B1067-7, it previously launched SpaceX’s 22nd and 25th Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-22/CRS-25) to the International Space Station, NASA's Crew-3 and Crew-4 astronaut missions, Turkey's Turksat 5B satellite, as well as one Starlink mission. Soon after launching Falcon 9’s upper-stage to Low Earth Orbit, the booster landed on the 'Just Read the Instructions' droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. It marked B1067-7's seventh landing and SpaceX's 152nd recovery of an orbital-class rocket. To date, SpaceX has reused Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters in its fleet 125 times out of 189 missions.
The HOTBIRD 13F satellite was deployed to orbit around half-an-hour after liftoff, it will operate alongside HOTBIRD 13G. Both satellites were manufactured by Airbus Defence and Space to replace the three existing satellites in Eutelsat's space fleet. HOTBIRD 13F and 13G are designed to provide up to 1,000 television channels, including high-definition television broadcasts of 4K video, to over 160 million households across Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Hotbird-13G features technology that will improve global positioning systems for the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) in Europe.
Featured Image Source: SpaceX
About the Author
Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
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