Baku, Azerbaijan, March 7
By Azad Hasanli - Trend:
Azerbaijan plans to earn $16 million from selling satellite capacity of Azerspace-2 in 2019, Trend informs referring to the report of Azerbaijan's Cabinet of Ministers on activities in 2018.
In general, the government plans to bring revenues from satellite operations to $400 million.
Presently, 46 percent of Azerspace-2 satellite capacity has already been rented by Intelsat for 15 years. In late October 2018, the company signed an agreement to acquire another 20 percent of the satellite capacity. For each of the agreements, Intelsat will pay Azercosmos $185 million, which will make it possible to recover up to 80 percent of the cost of financing the project.
Commercial sales of Azerspace-2 communication satellite resources began in February 2019.
Azerspace-2 was launched with the Ariane 5 carrier rocket of Arianespace, a French company, on Sept. 26, 2018 from the launch platform ELA-3 in the Guiana Space Center.
The satellite is designed to provide a number of telecommunications services. Its service area includes the countries of Europe, Central and South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Azerspace-2 is located in the geostationary orbit at 45 degrees east longitude.
Azerspace-2 is a reserve satellite for the first satellite, Azerspace-1, and will enable Azercosmos to expand its geography of coverage and the range of services. Moreover, the second satellite will allow taking part in large international tenders, which was not possible before.
The first communications satellite of Azerbaijan, Azerspace-1, was launched into geostationary orbit at 46 degrees east longitude on Feb. 8, 2013. The satellite was launched from the Kourou space center by Arianespace.
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