Telstar-18 Vantage launched on 2018-09-10 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 with a launch mass of approximately 7,060 kg.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster that supported the Eutelsat 10B mission previously supported the launches of Telstar 18 VANTAGE, Iridium-8, and multiple Starlink missions.
The booster that completed its ninth flight on 2021-05-04 previously launched the Telstar 18 Vantage communications satellite, a set of Iridium satellites, and six other Starlink missions.
The Falcon 9 first stage that landed first flew in 2018-09-01 launching the Telstar 18 Vantage satellite, flew the final Iridium mission in 2019-01-01, and launched four Starlink missions beginning in 2019-05-01, most recently on 2020-08-18.
The first-stage booster used on the 2020-08-18 launch was first flown in 2018-09-01 to launch the Telstar-18 Vantage satellite to geostationary transfer orbit.
SpaceX used the same Falcon 9 booster to launch 60 Starlink satellites in May 2019, 10 Iridium Next satellites for Iridium in January 2019, and Telesat Canada’s Telstar 18 Vantage in September 2018.
Telesat launched the geostationary high-throughput satellites Telstar-18 Vantage and Telstar-19 Vantage in the past 12 months.
Telesat signed contracts with Indonesian telecommunications service provider PT iForte Solusi Infotek for Ku-band and C-band capacity on Telstar-18 Vantage.
The Falcon 9 first-stage booster used on the 2019-01-11 mission previously launched in September with Telesat’s Telstar 18 Vantage communications satellite.
Telstar 18 Vantage will provide Ku-band high-throughput spots over Indonesia and Malaysia and five additional Ku-band beams.
Telstar 18 Vantage will operate from 138 degrees east in geostationary orbit, replacing the existing Telstar 18.
The Falcon 9 payload Telstar 18 Vantage separated from the upper stage 32 minutes after liftoff and entered its planned geostationary transfer orbit.
Telstar 18 Vantage is a high-throughput satellite and is the second Telesat spacecraft launched by SpaceX that summer following the 2018-07-22 launch of Telstar 19 Vantage on another Falcon 9 Block 5 from the same launch pad.
APT Satellite will rebrand its purchased capacity on Telstar 18 Vantage as Apstar-5C to replace the existing Apstar-5 satellite.
Telstar 18 Vantage will provide C-band capacity over the Asia Pacific region.
APT Satellite of Hong Kong paid $118,800,000 for 57.5 percent of Telstar 18 Vantage’s capacity, making it the satellite’s biggest customer.
Telstar 18 Vantage was built by Space Systems Loral and weighed about 7,000 kg at liftoff.
Telesat will provide HTS capacity over Asia with Telstar-18 Vantage/Apstar-5C, a satellite shared with APT Satellite of Hong Kong.