SES-17: Uncovering the secrets behind DTP and KA-HTS

You never forget our launch. We're getting down to T-minus 15 seconds. Where it is that there's clear skies you should be able to watch the launch for a while. The cultural center is a couple of kilometers away from the actual launch pad. 3, 2, 1, 0. We have main engines start up and we have lifts off of an ILS proton rocket. That's less. When you look on the screen, you see the rocket being released and starting to move up, but you hear nothing. It takes a number of seconds for the sound to arrive at the control center. A little bit of a complicated thing to do to the fact that this is not a bike anymore, but at about 10 seconds you have to lift off. You see the noise wave and the vibration coming from the launch. Such a model of power is impressive and never forget. For proton, it corresponds to about 1.6 and occurs 1 minute to seconds after lift off. Hi everyone. Today we're going to Geek out. Just a little. Because on this episode we're talking SES 17. With our Vice President of Technology Programs Management, Paul Van Gelder, and our Chief Technology Officer, Ruri Pinto. Welcome to satellite stories. I'm your host, Christina Smith-Meier. We've referenced something called SES 17 a few times in our podcast series, including the episode we shared with our CEO Steve Collar at the start of this year. But this time we're going to dig a little bit deeper. We ask, what is SES 17? And what makes it different from our existing geostationary satellites? And what can our customers and partners expect? Once it begins its journey of orbiting Earth? You see, the launch of a new satellite is always a big deal here at SES. It can take months, if not years, and hundreds of people and tens of partners to turn these projects into a reality. But there really is something quite special about SES 17. It's the most advanced and largest geosatellite ever procured by SES. It'll weigh over six metric tons at launch, and will have a wingspan of 48 metres. I mean, that's taller than the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Plus, it'll be the first geosatellite to use ARC, or ARC, an industry-first software system. Something Paul is going to tell us all about later. But let's learn about what that'll mean for coverage and latency speeds for our customers moving forward. Whether on land, at sea, or in the air. It's something so much more flexible, with huge thanks to a brilliant collaboration with our partners Talers Alinear Space. Let's find out more as we join Rui Pinto, our CTO for a very quick video call. I started by asking him to explain what SES 17 is all about. So SES 17 is a big satellite. It's a multi-mission geostation satellite that weighs over six tons when fully loaded with fuel. Satellites like SES 17 contrary to our new satellites, which are more of a production-like type of satellite. SES 17 and not a big geosatellite. They are almost handcrafted. They are manually assembled, built and carefully tested. And it is a side to see. More than, I'm saying, certainly at least 500 people, if not more, have been working on it for quite some time for years to put it together tested. And make sure it works as designed, that it provides all the services that we needed to provide. And then we launch it. So you said SES 17 is a big satellite. How much bigger is it than the usual ones we shoot out into space? If you compare with other geos, SES 17 is one of a kind. Because it has the DTP, it has huge capacity. It's certainly bigger than maybe 10 to 20 percent bigger. I don't have an exact number, but it is big. It would look like a double-decker bus when it's folded before it opens up. And when it opens up? From tip of solar to tip of solar, it's almost as lengthy as a football field, which is quite impressive. So big is definitely the appropriate word there. Exactly. So on satellite stories, we've talked about HTS satellites in the past. But SES 17 is a VHTS satellite. Can you tell us about what that means and how different that is from other SES satellites? We love to create acronyms to differentiate our services. And VHTS is one of those acronyms. What it actually means is that the digital transpire process on SES 17 is the latest generation digital processor that TALIS has developed. And it's going to be flown on SES 17 for the first time. And VHTS means essentially that you can focus power and frequencies in particular spot beams. So what do you do with HTS and VHTS satellites? Instead of having a large coverage area, say Europe or the North Atlantic, with one beam, you can move power and frequency between those beams as you need, as your customers need. And if you reduce the size of the beam, you can provide much more capacity. That's why we call it VHTS very high throughput satellite. So what is SES 17's mission? What's it going to do once it's up there in space? SES 17 covers the Americas and covers the North Atlantic. It is a multi-mission satellite. That's one of the reasons why it is a large satellite. The priority will be to work with TALIS-A-JONX and provide essentially connectivity to planes. So that you can have streaming on planes, you can have your email, you can not sleep on a continental flight if you don't want to. And when exactly would the service be up and running? We are working hard to make sure that we launch SES 17 alongside another satellite from the French government. In fact, the C-H-Q's military satellite, once it's launched on an A-H-5, we then do what is called an electrical orbit raising. We use the electrical thrusters on the satellite to slowly raise its orbit so that it reaches its final position. And we take a whole month or a little bit more to make sure that everything is fine, that all the onboard systems are performing as expected. Remember that the launch environment is very harsh. The rocket vibrates a lot. You are going through extreme pressure and then you are out in space with extreme temperature variations. You want to make sure that everything is working as designed as you tested it on the ground. But by end of May next year, SES 17 should be providing service to planes and to other customer segments as well. We expect and are working with our partners on the ground, the H&S, use NACP, Plur Systems and GILAD to provide six data services, mobility services, maritime service, and IR services for which it was originally designed for. The advantage of the digitally processed satellite like SES 17 is that you can serve many different market segments, many different customers all over the Americas and the North Atlantic. Thanks to Rui for getting us started. We'll hear more from him in a moment. But first, let's recap what we've learnt so far. SES 17 is a powerful KA very high throughput satellite being built by TALES. Number 2, it's the most advanced and the largest telecommunication satellite ever built by TALES. And number 3, it is also the very first SES satellite with a fully digital payload. But that's not all. Let's take a step even further into the world of satellite technology as we talk to Paul Van Gelder. His VP of Technology Programs Management, a chap who really knows his stuff. So Paul began by clarifying the role of something called a DTP. This piece of kit is at the heart. of SES 17 success. It stands for the digital transparent processor and what it means for first part is, I guess, obvious it's digital so instead of having RF switches and anything like that, it's fully processed and the transparent part just means the signals that are sending to this waste craft and back down they're not being processed on board so in that sense it's like what we used to call Ben5 satellites or whatever goes up, goes down, there's no demodulation or anything fancy on going on board the satellite. But in reality what it means it's just a big switch meaning we can switch any uplink to any downlink and you gateway to any user beam, any to any basically and you can create small connectivity so if you have megahertz up to much lower larger you could consider the very large switch on board of the satellites basically. So then just to clarify what exactly is the main reason or advantage to implementing a DTP on board the satellite? I mean why is it special? Well, for instance without this you have to design on the ground a certain connectivity for instance from this location to another location and once the satellite is launched you cannot change it anymore so meaning you may have had a markets forecast where you think well this is what we're going to sell and maybe we will sell it in the first few years and then market them and changes but we cannot change that connectivity but with the DTP if the customer goes somewhere else or the traffic goes somewhere else we can fully adapt so that's the main point. One particular thing that SCS17 will be able to do is work with O3B in power. So obviously there's a lot of information that you would be able to share with regards to SCS17 and O3B in power and how it all works together so if we just take it down to the basics why is that important and how is it going to complement O3B in power? So and the different orbits that you can put it satellite in a different proven columns right the geostationary typically the cover it's large but then the latency is more because it's further away from the earth for O3B in power it's the opposite right latency is better but the cover is in the sense more narrow because it doesn't go all the way up north and south so if you combine the two orbits in the first example of that will be SCS17 and O3B in power you can define solutions that take benefit of both so depending on on the location of for instance the customer we can switch between the two and provide maybe low latency service in a certain area but then still provide a good service outside the O4BM power area. There are also more creative solutions where, for instance, it makes sense to do forward the rex-entrafic over the geostationary satellite but then do the return traffic over the O3BM power constellation. So there's a lot of creative solutions by combining the two assets where we can actually take advantage of the pros of each orbit without suffering from the negative of the orbits basically. We've talked about SCS17 is doing up there in space but what is going on on the ground? Quite a lot actually because the fact that the satellite is so flexible that the payload is so flexible to benefit from that we also need to be flexible on the ground and that means we are developing you could call it smart controller you call it ARC, it's sense for adaptive resource controller that's sort of the brains on the ground and that's a couple of things dynamic management and control of different kind of systems it can also optimize the performance and then it's also allows us to be future-proof or whatever is coming with a short and orchestrated source in the future but at the moment to start with the first one so the dynamic management and control what that means is if one of our gateway suffers from rain fate and we want to switch over to another so we need to reconfigure the payload on the satellite we need to reconfigure the systems on the ground that keeps track of all the carriers we need to reconfigure the gateways and we need to do this in a way that's well orchestrated to avoid that we may switch something on the payload while the ground isn't ready and an ARC will allow us to do all of that so it will Princess Monatura weather and it will do what we call now casting which basically is weather forecasting but really in a short term like the next 10 or 15 minutes to make all kinds of prediction doesn't make sense to switch this gateway because rain is coming to another place but maybe rain is coming there as well or what's the hardware state is so there's a whole bunch of intelligence in that system that allows us to benefit from the flexibility we have in space by basically managing the ground accordingly the easiest example is to switch from one gateway to another but as if there's many more things it can do then for certain service and applications it also allows us to orchestrate the services and that means manages in a way that everything works well together and it's a different vendors we may need supplier for certain services different domains Princess the trustee on network the space domain of course the ground domain and make sure all of that works well together and adapts to what's needed in an automated manner so that's that's what ARC and other systems allow us to do on the ground to benefit from what we have in space ARC will also help with the operations of the overb and power constellation so all of that is in development integration and testing is ongoing so certain elements have been tested and verified but it's basically on the development at the moment I like many of you I imagine I've only ever seen a satellite launch on TV or sitting on the sofa at home I can see now the image of that rocket waiting patiently for its instructions I can hear that sound of the countdown in French and English and the silence that follows where everybody wonders is everything okay did it work can we celebrate yet so needless to say when it comes to catching up with my colleagues who are lucky enough to see a launching person I always have a ton of questions about what it's really really like naturally as part of his remit Rui our CTO will play a major role in the launch of SCS 17 so while I had his attention I was curious and a bit cheeky and asked about the plans for the launch later this year fortunately for us Rui was a good sport and more than happy to paint a picture of what the proposed schedule involves so we're going to launch SCS 17 on an AR-5 rocket from Google and French Guiana it'll be a dual launch so there will be two satellites SCS 17 and another French satellite C-AQs that will serve the French military both satellites are on the same schedule actually both are manufactured by Talisa Linha space which makes it slightly easier to coordinate as we rope up to launch we have to make sure that the launch campaigns on site are well aligned the feeling of the spacecraft the latest checkout of both spacecraft are done that they are integrated into the fairing on top of the rocket SCS 17 goes on top and C-AQs goes below it and then everything is ready it's it's always exciting to launch a satellite you imagine both for C-AQs and for SCS 17 that a lot of people worked years for that moment and you're always double checking triple checking that everything is absolutely fine for for the launch we have launchers are here many times it's always exciting to be in the control room do the latest checkout make sure that the satellite is at the right temperature that the batteries are fully charged at all the systems are up that both satellites are what is called a goal for launch so that everything 100% double check and triple check for both satellites and you always have you have butterflies in your stomach it's stressful but at the same time it's a release because you know there it is it's going into space and you never forget a launch one thing that you do remember is because the control center is a couple of kilometers away from the actual launch pad so when you look on the screen you see the rocket being released and starting to go well but you hear nothing because it's two kilometers it takes a number of seconds for the sound to arrive at the control center and not on the satellite the vibration the ground so it's you never forget that you sit on the screen it's going up but you hear nothing until you you you feel the noise wave and the vibration coming from the launch such a amount of power is impressive you never forget it the tension in that room must be unbelievable well what I like to remember is the release of the tension in the launch is successful so actually when can you celebrate is it once it's going up in the air do you have to hold your breath for a good two minutes, 20 minutes, what are we talking about here? There are things, right? First you celebrate the fact that it's off the bat, it's on the right bat. The first stage has burned and separated. You only really relax. When you receive telemetry and you send the first comment on the sunlight, the sunlight is by itself, that's when you sort of relax. And it will take a good hour to get there. Of course, at each stage you feel relief, but when you are separated, you send a comment, you receive telemetry, you think, "Yeah, I can go and open the champagne bottle, do a nice speech, thinking I hear and our partners, and let the ground cruise in bed, so often can't take it from there." And then you can have a good night's sleep because I'm guessing the night before you don't really get much, eh? No, no. And there's always a couple of speeches and sometimes they throw people into the swimming pool in their hotel and so on. You know, when that stress relieves, you have to be careful, so that you don't want to know what. So then I'm just going to ask one last question, Rui, what are you most excited about when it comes to SCS-17? Good question, Christina. The industry is changing, right? It's being disrupted. SCS-17 is one of a kind. In the sense that it has the latest DTPs, multi-mission, it's really large. What I'm excited is that, in the end, it heralds the end of a year of big Giu satellites and the start of another year of smaller, more soft-or-defined satellites in Niu, Giu and in Liu as well. So it's a it's a sign of the time that we are putting SCS-17 in service successfully and at the same time moving on to more configurable, smaller, quicker-to-manufacture satellites. That's what excites me about SCS-17. It's a sort of divide between two years in the industry. So what's going to be keeping you in the team busy once SCS-17 and O3BM power are launched? We are thinking about the European Commission initiative about having a multi-orbital architecture. We are thinking about replacing some of our Giu satellites. There is no shortage of things that are going to keep us busy. I can tell you that. But it's a little bit like when you're playing in a tournament. You want to think about one game at a time. SCS-17 and power 19.2 East. And then we'll see what comes next. There will be no lack of excitement. I can tell you that. We want to thank Rui Pinto and Paul Van Gelder so much for joining us today on this special episode on satellite stories. And although we've only touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SCS-17, there's loads more information out there for you to learn about this project. We'll be sure to keep you updated on what happens after it's launch in coming episodes. More specifically, it'll be brilliant to cover how it's been used and its impact. But until then, please do follow this podcast so you're notified the minute the next episode is released. And I promise you the next one, it's a goody. In the meantime, for more about what we do visit scs.com.