Page 28 - Satellite Communications, Fourth Edition

8 Chapter One

Figure 1.3 INTELSAT VII coverage (Pacific Ocean Region; global, hemispheric, and
spot beams). (From Lilly, 1990, with permission.)

The INTELSAT VIII-VII/A series of satellites was launched over the
period February 1997 to June 1998. Satellites in this series have similar
capacity as the VII/A series, and the lifetime is 14 to 17 years.
It is standard practice to have a spare satellite in orbit on high-
reliability routes (which can carry preemptible traffic) and to have a
ground spare in case of launch failure. Thus the cost for large international
schemes can be high; for example, series IX, described later, represents
a total investment of approximately $1 billion.
Table 1.3 summarizes the details of some of the more recent of the
INTELSAT satellites. These satellites provide a much wider range of
services than those available previously, including such services as
Internet, DTH TV, tele-medicine, tele-education, and interactive video
and multimedia. Transponders and the types of signals they carry are