EUTELSAT 21B

Eutelsat 21B is a geostationary communications satellite operated by the French satellite company Eutelsat. Launched in November 2012, it serves as a direct-to-home broadcasting platform positioned over the 21.5° East longitude slot, a position that provides coverage across Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. Catalogued by NORAD under the identifier 38992 and carrying the international designator 2012-062B, the satellite was previously referred to as Eutelsat W6A before Eutelsat standardized the naming conventions across its fleet. As of the time of writing, the spacecraft remains operational in geostationary orbit.

Mission and Purpose

The primary role of Eutelsat 21B is to deliver direct-to-home broadcasting services from its geostationary position at 21.5 degrees east longitude. This orbital slot places the satellite in a well-established arc above the equator, where it is geometrically positioned to serve large, fixed receiving dishes and consumer broadcast receivers across a broad swath of the Eastern Hemisphere. Direct-to-home broadcasting from geostationary orbit is among the most commercially significant applications in the satellite industry, enabling television distributors, news networks, and content providers to reach millions of subscribers simultaneously without terrestrial relay infrastructure.

The satellite effectively succeeded Eutelsat 21A, a spacecraft that had occupied the same orbital neighborhood since its launch in 1999. When a satellite reaches the end of its operational life — whether through fuel depletion, component degradation, or changing market demands — operators typically seek continuity of service at the same longitude slot, as broadcasters and subscribers are already aligned to that position. Eutelsat 21B was introduced to maintain that continuity and to provide an upgraded capacity at the 21.5° East position, ensuring that the broadcasting services previously anchored by its predecessor could continue without interruption for customers across the coverage area.

It is worth noting that the satellite's specific mission configuration — including the number and type of transponders, exact frequency bands in use, and the precise service agreements — is not fully detailed in publicly available catalogs. What is established is the operator's stated use case of direct-to-home broadcasting, which aligns with Eutelsat's broader commercial portfolio. Eutelsat is one of the world's leading satellite operators, managing a fleet of geostationary satellites that collectively serve broadcasters, governments, internet service providers, and enterprise customers.

Orbit and Tracking

Eutelsat 21B occupies a geostationary orbit, the class of orbit in which a satellite's orbital period closely matches the rotational period of the Earth. This synchronization means the satellite appears effectively stationary from any fixed point on the ground, making it ideal for applications like broadcasting, where antennas must maintain a continuous, uninterrupted lock on a single point in the sky.

The satellite's current tracked orbital parameters reflect a well-maintained geostationary position. Its apogee stands at approximately 35,808 km and its perigee at approximately 35,782 km, indicating a nearly circular orbit with only a modest difference of around 26 km between its highest and lowest points. True geostationary orbits are ideally circular, and this close apogee-perigee relationship confirms that the spacecraft is being actively maintained near its assigned slot. The orbital inclination is recorded at 0.1 degrees, an extremely small deviation from the equatorial plane. Fully geostationary satellites target an inclination of exactly zero degrees, and the near-zero figure here is consistent with ongoing station-keeping operations. The orbital period of approximately 1,436.1 minutes — just under 24 hours — is the hallmark characteristic of geostationary orbit, locking the satellite to a position relative to the rotating Earth beneath it.

From a tracking perspective, geostationary satellites like Eutelsat 21B are among the more straightforward objects to follow, precisely because they do not meaningfully move across the sky from a ground observer's standpoint. Their position in the catalog is updated as operators perform station-keeping maneuvers — small thruster burns that correct for the subtle gravitational perturbations caused by the Moon, Sun, and the non-uniform distribution of mass within the Earth itself. These perturbations would, if left uncorrected, gradually cause the satellite's inclination to increase and its longitude to drift. The near-zero inclination of Eutelsat 21B reflects the continuous station-keeping work done to keep it precisely positioned at 21.5° East.

The satellite was launched on November 9, 2012, and it remains in orbit to this day. With a launch mass of 2,060 kg, it falls within the range of medium-to-large commercial geostationary communications satellites. No decay or reentry date has been recorded, consistent with its active status.

Design and Operator

Eutelsat 21B was manufactured by Thales Alenia Space, a European aerospace company that is a joint venture between Thales Group and Leonardo. Thales Alenia Space is one of the most prolific builders of commercial geostationary communications satellites in the world, with a portfolio spanning platforms for telecommunications, broadcasting, Earth observation, and navigation. The company has produced numerous satellites for Eutelsat and for a wide range of other international operators, and its manufacturing pedigree lends the spacecraft a degree of established engineering heritage.

The operator, Eutelsat, is headquartered in France and is one of the three largest commercial geostationary satellite fleet operators globally. Founded originally as an intergovernmental organization, Eutelsat was privatized in the early 2000s and has since grown into a publicly traded company with a fleet spanning dozens of satellites. Its business model centers on leasing transponder capacity to broadcasters, telecom providers, government agencies, and data services companies. The 21.5° East orbital slot is one of Eutelsat's established positions, and the transition from Eutelsat 21A to Eutelsat 21B at that slot illustrates the company's strategy of maintaining long-term presence at commercially valuable longitude positions.

The satellite's registered owner country is attributed to Eutelsat as an organizational entity, consistent with the convention used in satellite registration where the operator's national affiliation — in this case France — forms part of the spacecraft's identity. The mission type is not specified in the public catalog record beyond the general category of payload, though the context of direct-to-home broadcasting is well established through Eutelsat's public operational documentation.

Current Status and Significance

As of the current catalog data, Eutelsat 21B remains in orbit with no reentry or decay date recorded, indicating that it is either still operational or has been transitioned to a disposal or graveyard orbit configuration. Geostationary satellites that have exhausted their station-keeping fuel are typically boosted to a slightly higher graveyard orbit above the geostationary belt, removing them from the congested operational arc and minimizing interference and collision risk. Without specific decommissioning information in the public record, the precise operational status of the spacecraft is not confirmed here.

The satellite's significance lies partly in its role within the competitive European geostationary broadcast market. The 21.5° East position has historically been a notable broadcasting slot in the Eastern European and Middle Eastern markets. By providing continuity at that slot following the retirement of its predecessor, Eutelsat 21B helped maintain broadcaster and subscriber relationships that had been built over years of service from the earlier satellite. This kind of orbital continuity — passing service from one spacecraft generation to the next at a fixed longitude — is a standard but operationally important dimension of commercial satellite fleet management.

From a broader industry perspective, Eutelsat 21B represents one of many mid-size commercial broadcasting satellites launched in the early 2010s, a period of continued growth in the geostationary broadcasting market before the widespread disruption introduced by high-throughput satellites and the eventual rise of large low-Earth-orbit broadband constellations. Satellites of this generation were workhorses of the direct-to-home industry, and many remain in service or have only recently begun transitioning to end-of-life procedures.

The spacecraft's relatively modest mass of 2,060 kg and its placement on a standard geostationary trajectory are consistent with a purpose-built commercial broadcasting platform designed for long-duration service at a fixed orbital position. Its continued presence in the catalog, tracked under NORAD ID 38992, ensures that it remains part of the monitored geostationary population regardless of its current operational configuration. Organizations and hobbyists using satellite tracking tools can locate it within the geostationary arc near the 21.5° East longitude, where it sits alongside many other commercial broadcasting and telecommunications satellites that collectively form the infrastructure of modern global communications.