Yamal-300K’ Eastern Campaign

Two and a half years ago the Russian satellite operator Gazprom Space Systems replenished its orbital constellation with a new satellite Yamal-300K.

The satellite was launched from Baikonur cosmodrome and put into the 90°E slot on the geostationary orbit. After the successful launch of Yamal-401 satellite into the same orbital slot and moving all the customers from Yamal-300K to the new satellite, Yamal-300K started planed relocation into the other orbital slot 183°E. This position is located over the Pacific Ocean and enables to cover the Russian Far East, Korea, Japan and the territories of other South East Asian and to stretch Alaska too. These are the regions have good market prospects and namely because of this Gazprom Space Systems made a decision to extent the geography of it business into the Eastern direction and arranged this “Eastern Campaign”.

The satellite in its new designation is interesting for the Russian as well as the international customers. Gazprom Space Systems experienced it already at the stage of preliminary sales. On of Yamal-300K beams perfectly covers the Russian Far East and attracts attention of for example the Russian mobile operators concerned about creation of the backhaul infrastructure for their cellular networks in this region.

A steerable beam of the satellite is ready to serve any region of the South East Asia, Australia, New Zeeland and the waterlocked states of the Pacific Ocean. However, the most attractive coverage, in the operator opinion, is provided by the wide shaped beam of Yamal-300K that covers the north of the Pacific Ocean with its intensive aeronautic and maritime traffic and big transport hubs on the coast.

Recently Gazprom Space Systems essentially renewed and extended its satellite assets. Launch of the three high power satellites resulted in the 3.5 time growth of the satellite capacity amount in 2015 in comparison with 2012. Nowadays satellite flit of the company is rather young (the average satellite age is less than 3 years). The company markets 30% of Yamal satellites capacity outside Russia. In particular, one of the new satellites Yamal-402 55°E has achieved prominence on the markets of Africa and the Middle East and Yamal-202 49°E has been successfully working for the Asian markets for already more than 10 years.

In Russia Gazprom Space Systems is not only satellite operator but also a service provider and system integrator. The key element of the company ground infrastructure is the Telecommunication Center in Stchelkovo near Moscow, from where the satellite constellation is controlled and where the main ground assets to provide services are concentrated (hubs, up-links, NOC and so on). From this place the company also controls of the wide scale satellite communication earth stations network placed in the Russian regions.

Concerning further business development, along with the plans to create new own satellites Gazprom Space Systems also searches new business models. The company relies on cooperation with the other satellite operators to build and use orbital assets; moreover, it has such an experience. Joint efforts of the operators helps to resolve more and more frequently occurred collisions connected with overcrowding of the GEO.

Cooperation, among other issues, allows to share the risks of financing of capital-intensive satellite projects. The ideas to create joint satellites or hosted payloads has becoming more and more popular. For the periods when the own large investments are impeded similar solutions provide operators with opportunity to gain business tractions.

While similar business ideas are waiting for their implementation in practice the business project “Yamal-300K’ Eastern Campaign” already started.