spacetoday.net: Intelsat resurrects IA-7

Posted: Fri, Dec 3, 2004, 8:12 PM ET (0112 GMT)
Intelsat Americas 7 (SS/Loral)

Intelsat Americas-7 (IA-7), a satellite declared dead earlier this week, has resumed partial operations as engineers work to recover the spacecraft, Intelsat announced late Friday. In a statement, Intelsat said that it was "pursuing a recovery mission" and had managed to restore control of the spacecraft on Thursday. Partial service has been restored on the spacecraft, and several key customers were expected to be able to start using the spacecraft again by late in the day. One of those customers, satellite Internet service provider StarBand, said service had been restored to all of its customers once IA-7 was recovered. The satellite, launched in September 1999, was disabled early Sunday, November 28 by what Intelsat now calls a "sudden and unusual electrical distribution anomaly". An investigation into the incident by Intelsat and Space Systems/Loral, the satellite manufacturer, is still in progress.