SES AMERICOM

'SES Americom' is a major commercial satellite operator based in the United States. Formerly 'RCA Americom' and 'GE Americom' the company is now (with SES Astra and SES New Skies) one of the principal parts of SES S.A..

Contents

Satellite Fleet

History

SES purchase

See also

External links

Satellite Fleet

SES Americom operates the following satellites:

Satellite	Position	Manufacturer	Model	Launched	Launch vehicle	Comments
AMC-1	103°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100A	September 8 1996	Atlas IIA
AMC-2	105°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100A	January 30 1997	Ariane 44L
AMC-3	87°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100A	September 4 1997	Atlas IIAS
AMC-4	101°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100AX	November 13 1999	Ariane 44LP
AMC-5	79°W	Alcatel Space	Spacebus 2000	October 28 1998	Ariane 44L
AMC-6	72°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100AX	October 22 2000	Proton K Block DM
AMC-7	137°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100A	September 14 2000	Ariane 5G
AMC-8	139°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100A	December 19 2000	Ariane 5G
AMC-9	83°W	Alcatel Space	Spacebus 3000B3	June 7 2003	Proton K Breeze M
AMC-10	135°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100A	February 5 2004	Atlas IIAS
AMC-11	131°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100A	May 19 2004	Atlas IIAS
AMC-15	105°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100AX	October 15 2004	Proton M Breeze M
AMC-16	85°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100AX	December 17 2004	Atlas V
AMC-18	105°W	Lockheed Martin	A2100A	December 8 2006	Ariane 5 ECA
Satcom C3	79°W	GE AstroSpace	GE-3000	September 10 1992	Ariane 44LP

History

RCA American Communications (RCA Americom) was founded in 1975 as an operator of RCA Astro Electronics-built satellites. The company's first satellite; Satcom 1, was launched on December 12, 1975. Satcom 1 was one of the earliest geostationary satellites.
Satcom 1 was instrumental in helping early cable TV channels (such as Superstation TBS and CBN) to become initially successful, because these channels distributed their programming to all of the local cable TV headends using the satellite. Additionally, it was the first satellite used by broadcast TV networks in the United States, like ABC, NBC, and CBS, to distribute their programming to all of their local affiliate stations. The reason that Satcom 1 was so widely used is that it had twice the communications capacity of the competing Westar 1 (24 transponders as opposed to Westar 1’s 12), which resulted in lower transponder usage costs.
14 more (increasingly sophisticated) Satcom satellites would enter service from 1976 to 1992. In 1986 General Electric acquired RCA and renamed the Americom unit GE American Communications (GE Americom). From 1996 new satellites were named in the GE-# series, i.e. GE-1 in 1996, GE-2 in 1997 etc.

SES purchase

In 2001 SES Global was formed by SES for the $4.3 billion acquisition of GE Americom, which was completed in November of that year. SES Global was established as the group management company; with the renamed 'SES Americom' and SES Astra as subsidiaries.
After the acquisition of GE Americom by SES, all the satellites previously named with the GE-# prefix were renamed to AMC-# (i.e., GE-1 renamed to AMC-1, and so on).
The President and CEO of SES Americom is Edward Horowitz.

See also

★ SES S.A.

★ SES Astra

External links

★ SES Americom - Official site