DirecTV's First Spaceway Satellite Prepared for Launch

The DIRECTV Group and Boeing announced the arrival of the Spaceway F1 satellite at the Sea Launch home port in Long Beach, California, where it will undergo final preparations for a late April launch aboard a Zenit-3SL vehicle.


Spaceway F1, which is built on the Boeing 702 platform, is described as "the most complex commercial satellite system ever manufactured." The spacecraft includes a flexible payload with a fully steerable downlink antenna that can be reconfigured on orbit.


Spaceway F1 is one of four Boeing-built Ka-band satellites DIRECTV has scheduled for launch over the next three years as part of a historic expansion of programming capacity. The expansion will enable DIRECTV to deliver more than 1,500 local and national high definition channels and other advanced programming services to consumers nationwide by 2007.
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