SES today announced that the SES-17 satellite was launched into space onboard an Ariane 5 launcher operated by Arianespace from the Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 11:10 pm local time (02:10 am UTC).

The Ka-band satellite will provide coverage across the Americas, the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean from its orbital slot of 67.1 degrees West orbital slot. The GEO satellite is set to deliver connectivity for SES customers operating in the aeronautical, maritime, enterprise, and government markets.

Thales Alenia Space has built the SES-17. The Ka-band geostationary satellite will have nearly 200 user beams that can be connected to any other beam at any time. SES-17 can adapt to changing customer needs in real-time since it has the ability to dynamically change the power and frequency allocation of any beam.

SES said it is the first GEO satellite to use Adaptive Resource Control (ARC), an industry-first software system that leverages the full flexibility of totally digital payloads to autonomously adapt space and ground resources on the fly to meet customer needs.

The satellite will reach orbit as of mid-2022. Anchor customer Thales InFlyt Experience will use SES-17’s connectivity to power its aviation connectivity solution, FlytLIVE. Thales InFlyt Experience will ensure both crew and passengers will have an always-on high-speed Wi-Fi connection at peak times and in high-traffic routes while optimising bandwidth.

Craig Olson, Vice President at Thales InFlyt Experience, said: “The network and satellite architecture was specifically developed for the unique connectivity requirements of our commercial aviation customers and their passengers.”

Steve Collar, CEO of SES, said: “We are looking forward to SES customers being able to leverage the high throughput, global reach and low-latency of SES’s multi-orbit, interoperable Ka-band satellite network comprising SES-17 and our upcoming O3b mPOWER constellation.”