NSS 6

NSS 6 [Lockheed Martin]

NSS 6, a Ku-band satellite with Ka-band uplink capabilities, will provide fully interactive access to high-speed Internet and other multimedia communications. Additionally, it will provide direct-to-home broadcasting services as well as the full complement of traditional enterprise telecommunications services across a large coverage area stretching from the eastern Mediterranean and Southern Africa to Australia, Japan and Korea.

NSS 6 is uniquely configured to satisfy the changing demands of New Skies customers, including Internet Service Providers (ISPs), broadcasters, direct-to-home services providers and private corporations. The special features of the satellite will enable New Skies' customers to operate fully interactive, high-speed networks that incorporate small terminals capable of carrying Internet and other bandwidth-intensive services throughout the coverage area of NSS 6. NSS 6 is also equipped with extra on-board redundancy for critical units, minimizing risk of single-point failure throughout the projected 14-year operational life of the satellite.

Unique features of the satellite include more than 60 high-power 36 MHz -equivalent Ku-band transponders that can be flexibly allocated, in-orbit, to any of six broad beams covering India, China, the Middle East (with Southern African spot coverage), Australia, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. Additionally, up to 15 highly linearized transponders can be assigned to each of the six beams to respond to changing market demand. Each Ku-band beam is formed by an independent high-gain antenna system, offering 51-53 dBW in key markets.

The NSS 6 satellite also has 12 super-high-gain Ka-band uplink spot beams, facilitating data rates of at least 1 Mbps from antennas as small as 75 - 90 cm located at customer sites. These high-speed, high-performance Ka-band uplinks are cross-strapped to the broad Ku-band downlink beams, efficiently handling the asymmetric levels of traffic that characterize Internet networks. This design has the added advantage of maximizing efficient use of spectrum and satellite capacity.