[Satnews] Spacecom (Tel Aviv Stock Exchange: SCC), operator of the AMOS satellite fleet, today announced that all communications and signals from the AMOS-5 satellite at the 17 degrees E orbital position have been lost.
Advertisement
The company that produced the satellite, Spacecom, has been frantically attempting to re-connect with the satellite after it stopped responding on 21 November with no explanation as to why it stopped, with all systems appearing to be functioning normally prior to its disappearance.
Customers, mainly in African countries, are no longer receiving service.
The company said that the failure happened on Saturday and that it was working to re-establish communication with the satellite, but that it did not have further information about the cause of the “anomaly”.
Spacecom’s AMOS-5 Goes Dark… Eurocom owns 64.5 percent of Spacecom.
Spacecom signed a $1 billion contract with Facebook for the Amos 6 satellite, due to be launched in February.
Local reports out of Israel say that it will take about three years to replace the satellite.
Prior to its silencing, Amos-5 was working at 65pc load capacity, which, given the amount of data being processed, is a considerable amount to redistribute to the four other satellites operated by the company.
Amos 5, had an annual revenue of about $40 million with value of between $160 million and $190 million.
“The Company wishes to clarify, based on the preliminary examinations it carried out, that even if there will be a “total loss” (complete failure) of the satellite, this would have a negligible effect on the equity of the company”.
When ISS Reshetnev of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, won the contract to build and launch the Amos-5, it was considered a rare win of commercial non-Russian business by the Russian builder, according to Spacenews.
Advertisement
Amos-5 carries a pan-African beam and regional beams over French-speaking central and West Africa in C-band, as well as Ku-band beams targeting Central Africa and Southern Africa, Spacenews reports.
