New Sat Launch

[mgd2win]

Got this info while at the NAB in Vegas

DirecTV Satellite Launch Activities UpdatedSea Launch LLC said DirecTV Inc.'s Spaceway F1 satellite is on its way to the company's equatorial launch site location in preparation for a scheduled April 26 launch on board a Zenit-3SL rocket. The launch window opens for a half hour at 12:31:30 a.m. PDT. The Boeing-built Spaceway F1 will ultimately reside at 102.8? West. The satellite carries a flexible payload with a fully steerable downlink antenna that can be reconfigured on orbit to seamlessly address market conditions.

In other DirecTV launch news, the company said its DirecTV 8 satellite is being readied for a mid-May launch by International Launch Services on a Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite will be used to enhance DirecTV's direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television programming. It will be located at 101? West and will take over service from an older satellite at that orbital location. The new spacecraft, built by Space Systems/Loral, will provide selectable medium- and high-power Ku-band broadcast services to DirecTV customers with a Ka-band payload that will be available to link DirecTV broadcast facilities as part of the company's initiative to significantly expand its capacity to launch hundreds of local digital and high-definition services.

[Dknow]

http://www.sea-launch.com/current_launch.htm

In additon to the previous posting.....

[mgd2win]

Its launched and looking good !!!

Sea Launch has successfully completed the Spaceway mission. A Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket lifted off from the Odyssey Launch Platform at 12:31am PDT ( 7:31 GMT ), April 26. All phases of the flight profile performed as expected. The mission ended with spacecraft separation from the Block DM upper stage, placing the Spaceway satellite into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. A ground station in South Africa acquired the spacecraft signal. All systems are operating nominally. The recorded webcast of the successful Spaceway launch is available for viewing by following the instructions listed to the right. *Please allow approximately one hour after completion of the live webcast for the archived launch to become available.

http://www.sea-launch.com/current_index_webcast.html

[DavidHead]

From this Betanews article (http://www.betanews.com/article/New_Satellite_Takes_DirecTV_High_Def/1114640740):

Early Wednesday, a Russian-made launch vehicle blasted off and delivered the first of four next-generation DirecTV satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The satellite, christened Spaceway F1, will serve up a capacity of 1,500 local high-definition and more than 150 national HD channels throughout the United States.

Customers in 12 metropolitan markets that, according to DirecTV's estimates, make up or 32.8 percent of all U.S. TV watching households, will begin receiving transmissions of HD network programming from the satellite in fall 2005.

These markets include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Houston and Tampa.