Fate of Palapa-C1 satellite still unclear
Fate of Palapa-C1 satellite still unclear
JAKARTA (JP): The European consortium Arianespace, which last year failed to launch two satellites, is still unable to confirm the launching of Indonesia's Palapa-C1 satellite scheduled for November.
Janetta Nizar, an executive of Sudarto & Noeradi Public Relations Counselors, Arianespace's media relations firm in Indonesia, told The Jakarta Post yesterday that even though the consortium successfully placed two satellites into orbit recently and will launch two more satellites later this month, it has not assured the Palapa-C1's launching as demanded by the Indonesian government.
The executive said that Arianespace is still considering the schedule for the launching of the Palapa-C1.
PT Satelindo, the operator of the Indonesian satellites from the Palapa-C generation, selected Arianespace in 1993 to place Palapa-C1 into orbit. Arianespace, a consortium of French Aerospatiale, British Aerospace, Dutch Fokker Space and Systems and German Deutsche Aerospace, rescheduled Palapa-C1's launching from November this year to next February or May due to its double launching failures last year.
Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave visited Arianespace last month to discuss the Palapa-C1 launching schedule.
In January last year, Arianespace's flight 63 failed to launch the Turksat-1A and the Eutelsat-2. In the following month, Arianespace's flight 70 failed again to launch the American Panamsat.
However, Arianespace was successful on March 28 in its flight 71 launching of the Brasilsat-B2 owned by Embratel of Brazil and Hot Bird-1, the first television broadcast satellite of the European organization, Eutelsat.
Flight 72 is scheduled on April 21 to carry the European Space Agency's ERS-2 remote sensing spacecraft into the sun-synchronous orbit.
The Indonesian government wants the Palapa-C1 to be launched in October or November 1995 on flight 85, as originally planned.
Deutsche Telekom
Meanwhile, Satelindo, which operates satellites as well as international and digital cellular telecommunications services, signed in Hannover, Germany, yesterday an agreement on the acquisition of 25 percent of its shares by Deutsche Telekom Mobilfunk (DeTeMobil), the analog and digital cellular telecommunications operator affiliated with Germany's Deutsche Telekom.
The agreement, signed during the Hannover Fair 1995, was the follow-up of the signing here last month of a draft accord on the share acquisition. The closing document of the agreement is scheduled to be signed today in Bonn in the presence of President Soeharto, Joop Ave, State Minister for Research and Technology B.J. Habibie and German Minister of Post and Telecommunications Wolfgang Boetsch.
The agreement finalizes DeTeMobil's acquisition of the 25 percent stake of Satelindo at US$586 million. After the acquisition, Satelindo will be 45 percent owned by PT Bima Graha Telekomindo -- a firm equally owned by the Bimantara and Artha Graha groups -- 22.5 percent by the state-owned domestic telecommunications operator PT Telkom and 7.5 percent by PT Indosat, another state-owned telecommunications service provider. (icn)