ASTRA 2B - Page Updated - 03/05/13
UPDATE‚ 03/05/13 at 22.30 - Astra 2B -‚ What is to be of Astra 2B at 19E? Could the mystery finally be "sol-ved" as "Inspector Clouseau" would say?! Oh Shit, I hear you say, "Rob"‚ is off one one of his tangents again!‚ Don't worry, I will try to keep it short! Once upon a time ... (LOL!), Until recently the Astra 2B satellite was at the 28.2 degrees east satellite position but following Astra 2F's arrival at this position "SES-Astra" moved Astra 2B to the 19.2 degrees east satellite position, it is in actual fact currently at 19.4 degrees east but I will come to that later, but why oh why was Astra 2B at the "19" degrees east position, well the answer as always lies in the fact that SES-Astra have and had a bigger plan and I believe that the reason that Astra 2B was moved to 19.2 degrees east is because SES-Astra want to‚ provide Ku-band coverage of Southern Africa from "19" degrees east, Astra 2B would allow SES-Astra to expand service to Southern Africa from the 19.2 degrees satellite position, before Astra 2B was moved from 28.2 to 19.2 another satellite was moved to 19.2, this was the AMC-2 satellite which was previously at 4.98 degrees east, SES-Astra filed a request to move AMC-2 to 19.2 degrees east so that it could provide Ku-band coverage of Southern Africa, AMC-2 was last year indeed moved to 19.2 but it has recently been moved from 19.2 degrees east and it is on it's way to it's new home of 80.85 west, so one would logically assume that what was once AMC -2's remit would‚ in the grand scheme of things‚ now be Astra 2B's remit which would mean that the reason that Astra 2B was moved to the 19.2 degrees east satellite position is to provide coverage and allow SES-Astra to expand service to Southern Africa by opening up yet another SES-Astra satellite position for Southern Africa, regarding the exact satellite positionings of both the AMC-" and Astra 2B satellites at "19" degrees east, SES-Astra does have many satellites positioned at 19.2 degrees east and for presumably safety and operational reasons these two satellites were not exactly placed at 19.2, AMC-2's exact position was 19.0, Astra 2B's exact position is 19.4, is it just a coincidence that both satellites were placed 0.2 degrees away from the main 19.2 degrees east satellites, or is it something more sinister, the fact that Astra 2B does have some previous history regarding broadcasting to Africa while it was at the 28.2 degrees east satellite position, albeit these broadcasts were to Western Africa‚ and Ghana specifically but the important thing to remember is that the beam is steerable, the fact that Astra 2B has 16 African beam transponders at it's disposal makes my reasoning all the more plausible as to why Astra 2B was moved to 19.4 degrees east, and that reason is that Astra 2B's new mission is to serve Southern Africa,‚ the mystery is finally "sol-ved", simples! There, it is always worth reading it to the end! You know it and "Rob" makes sense! For reference purposes below is the Astra 2B West Africa Beam from when 2B was at 28.2 degrees east‚
