The Al Yah 3 satellite has been delivered to Arianespace’s French Guiana launch site. Built by Orbital ATK for owners Mubadala Development, Abu Dhabi’s strategic investment business.

Al Yah 3 (YahSat-3) carries 53 active Ka-band user beams. The Ka-band spot beams provide two-way communications services to facilitate high-speed delivery of data to end-user applications such as broadband Internet and corporate networking as well as IP backhaul for telecommunications service providers.

Al Yah 3 will provide its services to Africa and Brazil. Orbital ATK was selected by Yahsat to build Al Yah 3. The Al Yah 3 satellite design is based on Orbital ATK’s GEOStar-3 satellite platform, and was manufactured and tested at Orbital ATK’s satellite manufacturing facility in Dulles, Virginia.

The satellite will launch around January 23rd next year. Also on board the rocket will be SES-14, built by Airbus and which will serve Central and South America, the Caribbean, the North Atlantic and parts of Europe, and replacing the NSS-806 satellite.

YahSat-3 will be positioned at 20 degrees West and mainly serve the Brazilian market, while SES-14 will go to 47.5 degrees West.

SES badly needs its SES-14 craft on station because NSS-806 lost about one-third of its transponder capacity earlier this year.

Both satellites are ‘all-electric’ and will use on-board electric thrusters to reach orbit. The overall journey length after launch will be about 4-6 months.

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