With the exception of the South solar array, the satellite's performance will remain nominal, Eutelsat has confirmed.
Two months after announcing an investigation into a malfunction on one of the two solar arrays on its EUTELSAT 5 West B satellite, Eutelsat has confirmed that the satellite will now finally enter service but at less than half its original capacity.The satellite is now expected to enter commercial service later in January and is expected to meet the designed lifetime.
A number of mitigation actions aimed at assuring service continuity will be implemented, following the end of life in stable orbit of EUTELSAT 5 West A, for the largest possible number of customers.
EUTELSAT 5 West B is fully insured against the eventuality of a partial or total loss by launch-plus-one-year insurance for up to 173 million euros.
The partial non-availability of EUTELSAT 5 West B will reduce Financial Year 2019-20 revenues for the Operating Verticals by $5.5m to $11m. The one-off cost of mitigation, mostly related to the repointing of ground antennae will be between zero to $11m.
In consequence, Eutelsats revenue objective for Financial Year 2019-20 is mechanically revised to around $1.45m for the Operating Verticals. All other financial objectives will remain unchanged.
