STAR-2

The STAR-2 Bus is a fully redundant, flight-proven, spacecraft bus designed for geosynchronous missions.

It is a satellite platform manufactured by Orbital Sciences Corporation with an apogee kick motor to place a communications satellite into geostationary orbit, a thruster to provide the satellite with orbital station-keeping for a 15 year mission, and solar arrays to provide the satellite payload with 5 kW of electrical power.

Advantages

Orbital's GEOStar-2 Bus design is unique within the satellite industry. Orbital’s GEOStar-2 Bus provides an affordable low-to-medium power satellite platform that is ideal for missions of this size. Rather than being a less efficient version of a larger, heavier product, Orbital’s GEOStar-2 Bus is designed specifically for the 1,000 to 5,550 watts payload class. The GEOStar-2 Bus is flight-proven with excellent operational performance among the 29 currently in-orbit. With two more GEOStar-2 satellites now in production or awaiting launch, Orbital has established its class of GEO satellite products as the unquestioned market leader.

STAR Bus

STAR Bus is a satellite platform developed by Thomas van der Heyden co-founder of CTAI, later sold to and manufactured by Orbital Sciences Corporation with an apogee kick motor to place a communications satellite into geostationary orbit, a thruster to provide the satellite with orbital station-keeping for a 15-year mission, and solar arrays to provide the satellite payload with 5 kW of electrical power.

History

The first satellite program based on the STAR Bus platform, developed by Thomas van der Heyden for the Indonesian Direct Broadcast program IndoVision, was IndoStar-1, which was launched in November 1997.

See also

References