Eutelsat has selected Astrium, Europe’s leading space company, to design and manufacture Eutelsat 3B, a new telecommunications satellite to provide video, data, Internet and telecom services across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of South America, notably Brazil. The satellite will operate from Eutelsat 3°E location in geostationary orbit.

Based on Astrium’s highly reliable Eurostar E3000 platform, Eutelsat 3B will operate 51 transponders in C, Ku and Ka-bands. Its ten antennas will enable Eutelsat to provide fixed widebeams and steerable spotbeams to regional and national markets with a scalable allocation of power and spectrum per beam in Ka band.

François Auque, CEO of Astrium, said: “Eutelsat 3B will be the eighth Eurostar E3000 ordered by Eutelsat and the 20th satellite Astrium has designed and manufactured for one of the world’s leading and most innovative operators.

We are delighted that Eutelsat has once again demonstrated its confidence in Astrium’s ability to deliver a high-quality product and look forward to continuing to play a key role in the company’s future success.”

Scheduled for launch in early 2014, Eutelsat 3B will have a launch mass of six tonnes, an electrical power of 12 kW and is designed to deliver more than 15 years of in-orbit operation.

This latest order from Eutelsat follows on from the successful entry into commercial service of the Astrium-built KA-SAT – the first High Throughput Satellite fully optimised for broadband access in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.

Eutelsat’s ATLANTIC BIRD™ 7 satellite is ready to be shipped next week by Astrium to the launcher assembly site and is scheduled to go into orbit in September. Astrium teams also continue to work on the W5A satellite, which will be delivered to Eutelsat in 2012.