EUTELSAT 115 WEST B

Eutelsat 115 West B is a commercial communications satellite operated by the European satellite operator Eutelsat, currently stationed in geostationary orbit above the Americas. Tracked under NORAD catalog ID 40425 and international designator 2015-010B, the spacecraft was launched on 1 March 2015 and remains operational in orbit today. It occupies a prime orbital slot at 115 degrees west longitude, from which it serves a broad range of communications needs across North and South America.

Mission and Purpose

Positioned over the Western Hemisphere, Eutelsat 115 West B supports an array of services including video distribution, data connectivity, government communications, and mobile applications across the Americas. The 115 degrees west longitude slot places the satellite in a favorable position to reach a wide geographic footprint stretching across the continental United States, Latin America, and surrounding regions — a corridor where demand for satellite-delivered broadband, broadcast, and government-grade communications has historically been strong.

The satellite's service portfolio reflects the diversified role that modern geostationary communications platforms are expected to fill. Video distribution remains a core function, with direct-to-home broadcast and content delivery forming a significant share of the capacity demand at this orbital position. Alongside this, data and broadband services address connectivity needs for commercial, enterprise, and institutional customers across territories where terrestrial infrastructure is sparse or unreliable. Government and defense communications represent another segment of the market served from this slot, where requirements for secure, reliable, and wide-area coverage align naturally with what a geostationary asset in this position can provide. Mobile services, often used by maritime and aeronautical operators traversing the Americas, round out the mission profile.

While the specific technical parameters of the satellite's payload — such as the number of transponders, frequency bands, or power output — are not recorded in the public catalog entry for this spacecraft, the general capabilities of the platform it is based on are well understood within the industry and point to a high-throughput, flexible design intended for exactly this kind of multi-service role.

Orbit and Tracking

Eutelsat 115 West B occupies a position in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), the band of space approximately 35,786 kilometers above the equator where a satellite's orbital period matches the rotational period of the Earth, causing it to appear stationary relative to the ground. The tracking data associated with NORAD ID 40425 confirms this placement precisely: the satellite's apogee stands at 35,796 km, its perigee at 35,794 km, and its orbital inclination is recorded at 0.0 degrees — all consistent with a well-maintained, operationally active geostationary spacecraft.

The orbital period of 1,436.2 minutes — very close to one sidereal day — is the defining characteristic of the geostationary orbit, and this figure aligns with the theoretical ideal. The near-perfect circularity of the orbit, with only a 2-kilometer difference between apogee and perigee, reflects active station-keeping by the satellite's onboard propulsion system. Operators routinely perform north-south and east-west station-keeping maneuvers to keep a geostationary spacecraft within a tightly defined box around its nominal longitude; the figures reported here suggest that such maintenance is ongoing and effective.

At an inclination of precisely 0.0 degrees, the satellite remains locked above the equatorial plane, drifting neither north nor south in its ground track. This is the hallmark of a fully controlled geostationary asset, as opposed to a geosynchronous satellite that has been left to drift, which would gradually develop an inclined, figure-eight ground trace visible from the ground. The orbital data as captured indicates Eutelsat 115 West B is being actively managed.

Because it sits in geostationary orbit at roughly 35,795 kilometers altitude, the satellite is far beyond the reach of low and medium Earth orbit tracking in the conventional visual sense. It does not pass overhead in the way that LEO satellites do; from any given point in the Americas, it appears fixed in the sky, making it an invisible but constant presence for the ground infrastructure locked on to it.

Design and Operator

Eutelsat 115 West B was built by Boeing Space Systems and is based on the Boeing 702SP bus — a compact, all-electric variant of Boeing's established 702 satellite platform. The "SP" designation stands for small platform, reflecting a design philosophy that trades the mass savings from eliminating a traditional chemical apogee kick motor for an all-electric propulsion approach, using ion thrusters for both orbit raising and on-orbit station-keeping. This architecture, while requiring a longer transit time from the transfer orbit to geostationary altitude after launch, allows the satellite to be significantly lighter at launch, enabling dual-manifest launches — where two satellites share a single rocket — and reducing launch costs accordingly.

The satellite was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 1 March 2015, as part of a dual-payload mission that took advantage of the mass savings inherent to the 702SP design. SpaceX's Falcon 9 had by that point established itself as a competitive commercial launch vehicle, and this mission represented another data point in the growing relationship between commercial satellite operators and new-generation launch providers.

Eutelsat, the operating entity behind this spacecraft, is one of the world's leading fixed satellite service providers, headquartered in Paris and operating a fleet of geostationary satellites covering Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. The company has pursued a strategy of expanding its Western Hemisphere presence through assets like this one, complementing its traditionally Europe-focused fleet with capacity positioned to address the large and commercially active Americas market. The owner country is listed as Eutelsat — a reference to the operator's identity rather than a national attribution in the conventional sense — reflecting the multinational, operator-centric nature of the commercial satellite industry.

The mass of Eutelsat 115 West B is not recorded in the publicly available catalog data for this object. This is not unusual for commercial spacecraft, where operators do not always disclose payload mass in public filings, and where the catalog entry reflects only what has been reported to or independently measured by tracking authorities.

Current Status and Significance

As of the data available to LowEarth, Eutelsat 115 West B remains in orbit and has not undergone atmospheric reentry. Its orbital parameters continue to reflect those of an actively maintained geostationary asset, and there is no indication in the tracked data that it has been relocated from its operational slot or decommissioned.

The spacecraft entered service during a period of notable evolution in the commercial satellite industry — both in terms of launch vehicle competition and satellite bus design. The 702SP platform, of which Eutelsat 115 West B is one example, represented a significant step in demonstrating that all-electric satellites could be commercially viable despite their longer orbit-raising timelines. Alongside its sister spacecraft launched on the same Falcon 9 mission, it helped validate the dual-manifest, all-electric model that has since become a more common feature of the commercial GEO market.

For the Americas communications market specifically, the 115 degrees west slot is a commercially meaningful position. It is well situated for coverage of the continental United States and offers reach into Central and South America, regions with growing demand for satellite services. Eutelsat's investment in maintaining a presence at this longitude reflects the ongoing commercial logic of the position, and the satellite's multi-service design — spanning video, data, government, and mobile applications — gives it the flexibility to serve a diverse customer base over its operational life.

The satellite's continued presence in geostationary orbit, approximately a decade after its launch, is consistent with the typical design lifetimes of modern commercial GEO spacecraft, which are commonly designed for 15 years or more of service. While mission status details are not reported in the catalog entry reviewed here, the orbital maintenance evident in the tracking data suggests the spacecraft continues to be a managed and presumably revenue-generating asset within Eutelsat's fleet.

For those monitoring the geostationary belt, Eutelsat 115 West B represents one entry in the densely populated arc of commercial, government, and scientific satellites that ring the Earth at equatorial altitude — a fixed, silent presence in the sky above the Western Hemisphere, quietly underpinning the video, data, and communications services that reach the ground far below.