Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), a subsidiary of Loral Space & Communications, and the leading provider of commercial satellites, today announced that Nimiq 5, a direct-to-home television satellite built for Telesat, one of the world's leading fixed satellite services operators, is performing post-launch manoeuvres according to plan. The satellite's solar array deployed on schedule early Friday morning following its successful launch from the Baikonur Space Centre in Kazakhstan aboard an ILS Proton Breeze M launch vehicle. Over the weekend, Nimiq 5's main thruster fired twice in order to begin manoeuvring into geosynchronous orbit.
International Launch Services (ILS), a world leader in providing mission and launch services to the commercial satellite industry, successfully carried the Nimiq 5 satellite into orbit today on an ILS Proton for Telesat, the fourth largest fixed satellite services operator worldwide. This was the fifth commercial mission of the year for ILS and the seventh successful Proton launch of 2009. With the launch of Nimiq 5 today, ILS has launched half of Telesats operational fleet. The ILS Proton Breeze M launched from Pad 39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 1:19 am today local time (19:19 GMT, 12:19 PDT; 15:19 EDT, September 17). After a 9 hour 15 minute mission, the Breeze M successfully released the Nimiq 5 satellite, weighing almost 5 tons, into geostationary transfer orbit. This was the 348th launch for the Proton.
Preparations for the launch of the Proton-M space rocket carrying the Nimiq 5 Canadian telecommunications spacecraft and the launch of the Soyuz booster carrying a Meteor-M meteorological satellite are being done at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
An ILS Proton rocket with a Breeze M upper stage is scheduled to launch the Nimiq-5 satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 19:19 GMT, 17th September, 2009.