The European Data Relay System’s EDRS-C is commanded for up to 200 inter-satellite links per day during nominal operations.
EDRS-C has logged four years of 24/7 operation and more than one million minutes of inter-satellite communication time.
Hylas-3 is a hosted payload with eight steerable beams that launched in mid-2019 as part of Airbus and the European Space Agency’s EDRS-C satellite.
Avanti has a hosted payload on Airbus’ and the European Space Agency’s EDRS-C lasercomm satellite.
Ariane 5 lifted off at 3:30 p.m. Eastern from Europe’s Guiana Space Center carrying Intelsat-39 and EDRS-C.
German manufacturer OHB built the EDRS-C satellite with subcontractor support from OHB Sweden, LuxSpace, and MT Aerospace.
Tesat-Spacecom developed the optical terminals for EDRS-C with the German Space Agency DLR.
EDRS-C stands for European Data Relay Satellite C and is operated by Airbus.
The 2019-08-06 launch placed Intelsat-39 and EDRS-C into geostationary transfer orbits.
EDRS-C is the second SmallGEO satellite built by OHB, following Hispasat-36W-1 which launched in early 2017 on an Arianespace Soyuz.
Airbus’ anchor customer for EDRS-C is the European Commission, which uses the satellite for the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 series in the Copernicus program.
A laser hosted payload on the commercial Eutelsat 9B spacecraft launched three years before EDRS-C as part of the SpaceDataHighway effort.
MDA Corp., now part of Maxar Technologies, supplied Avanti’s hosted payload on EDRS-C, completing Avanti’s fleet of four spacecraft.
British operator Avanti has a hosted payload on EDRS-C equipped with eight Ka-band spot beams.
The Ariane 5 mission carrying Intelsat-39 and EDRS-C was planned for 2025-07-24, and will be Arianespace’s seventh mission of the year counting the failed Vega mission.