ABS-2A (MONGOLSAT-1)

ABS-2A, cataloged under NORAD ID 41588 and internationally designated 2016-038A, is a commercial geostationary communications satellite launched in June 2016. Built around an all-electric propulsion architecture, it serves broadcast and data connectivity markets across a wide swath of the Eastern Hemisphere. The satellite is operated by Agility Beyond Space and is co-located with a companion spacecraft at the 75°E orbital slot, where it has remained continuously operational since reaching its final station-keeping position.

Mission and Purpose

ABS-2A was conceived as a high-capacity broadcast and broadband platform intended to address growing demand for satellite-delivered services across South East Asia, Africa, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and Russia. Its payload is built around 48 Ku-band transponders, a frequency range well suited to direct-to-home (DTH) television distribution, where relatively compact ground-based dish antennas can receive transmissions with acceptable link margins. Beyond DTH broadcasting, the satellite's transponder capacity supports a range of other service types that have become increasingly important in underserved or remote regions: very-small-aperture terminal (VSAT) networks, which enable enterprises and governments to operate private two-way data connections without relying on terrestrial fiber; cellular backhaul, which links remote base stations to the wider mobile telephone network via satellite rather than physical cable; and maritime and mobility applications, which provide connectivity to vessels and mobile platforms operating in areas where terrestrial communications infrastructure is unavailable or unreliable.

The 75°E orbital slot is strategically positioned to offer line-of-sight coverage to an exceptionally large combined service area. From this longitude, a geostationary satellite's footprint can simultaneously encompass densely populated parts of South and South East Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, and the central landmass of Russia — all markets that have historically been underserved by satellite capacity relative to their geographic extent or population. By co-locating ABS-2A with ABS-2 at the same slot, the operator can offer customers a larger aggregate pool of transponder capacity accessible from a single antenna pointing, a commercially significant advantage for broadcasters and teleport operators who may wish to contract capacity on both spacecraft without repointing their uplink equipment.

Orbit and Tracking

ABS-2A occupies a near-perfect geostationary orbit. Its tracked apogee stands at 35,802 km and its perigee at 35,789 km, a difference of only 13 km that reflects an orbit of extremely low eccentricity. At this altitude, the satellite completes one full revolution in approximately 1,436.2 minutes — very close to the 1,436-minute sidereal rotation period of the Earth — which means it remains effectively stationary relative to any fixed point on the ground below. Its orbital inclination is recorded at 0.0°, confirming that it is held in the equatorial plane through active station-keeping maneuvers that counteract the gravitational perturbations of the Moon, the Sun, and the slight oblateness of the Earth.

Because it is maintained in a fixed position relative to Earth's surface, ABS-2A does not rise and set in the conventional sense from the perspective of a ground observer. Instead, it appears as a faint, essentially stationary point of light at a fixed elevation and azimuth in the sky, accessible continuously to any ground station within its visibility arc. This characteristic is fundamental to its commercial utility: broadcast and data service customers can rely on permanent, uninterrupted line-of-sight access to the satellite without tracking antennas.

The satellite was launched on June 14, 2016 (UTC-4/Eastern Daylight Time), and remains in orbit with no decay or reentry date anticipated in the foreseeable future. Geostationary satellites at this altitude are not subject to atmospheric drag in any meaningful sense; their orbital lifetimes are instead determined by the quantity of propellant carried for station-keeping and the operational design life of the spacecraft. ABS-2A's all-electric propulsion system, which uses ion or Hall-effect thrusters rather than conventional chemical rockets to maintain its position, is highly propellant-efficient, a characteristic that typically extends the station-keeping lifetime available for a given wet mass. The satellite's total mass is 2,000 kg.

One practical consequence of relying on electric propulsion for all orbit-raising maneuvers is that the transit from the initial transfer orbit to the final geostationary station can take considerably longer than it would for a conventionally propelled spacecraft — often several months rather than days or weeks. This is a recognized trade-off of the all-electric architecture: reduced propellant mass and potentially longer operational life in exchange for a slower journey to final orbit.

Design and Operator

ABS-2A was manufactured by Boeing Satellite Development Center, one of the historically prominent commercial satellite manufacturers in the United States. Boeing has produced numerous geostationary platforms across multiple product lines, and all-electric variants of its satellite buses were introduced to the commercial market as operators sought to reduce launch mass and increase payload efficiency.

Ownership of the satellite is attributed to Asia Broadcast Satellite, while day-to-day operation and commercial management fall under Agility Beyond Space. ABS (operating under various related commercial identities over the years) has positioned itself as a provider of satellite capacity primarily to operators, broadcasters, and connectivity service providers across the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, African, and Russian markets — regions that correspond directly to ABS-2A's coverage footprint. The co-location strategy at 75°E, placing ABS-2A alongside ABS-2, reflects a broader industry practice of clustering capacity at preferred orbital slots to simplify access for customers with fixed-antenna infrastructure already aligned to a known orbital position.

The satellite's mission type and current operational status are not independently confirmed in the publicly available orbital catalog, though the spacecraft's continued presence in a maintained geostationary orbit is consistent with active commercial operation. Geostationary satellites that cease operation are typically maneuvered to a "graveyard" orbit several hundred kilometers above the geostationary belt, a disposal procedure mandated by international guidelines to preserve the commercially valuable geostationary arc from interference by defunct objects. The fact that ABS-2A remains tracked at its operational altitude suggests it has not been retired or decommissioned.

Regional Context and Significance

The 75°E slot and the Ku-band frequency plan of ABS-2A are well matched to the specific characteristics of its intended markets. Ku-band transponders are particularly effective for DTH broadcasting because the higher frequency allows smaller receive dishes — an important factor in residential markets across South and South East Asia and parts of Africa where installation of large antennas may be impractical or cost-prohibitive. At the same time, Ku-band is susceptible to rain fade in tropical regions, a trade-off that system designers and service providers account for through link budget margins and adaptive coding techniques.

The VSAT and cellular backhaul applications served by ABS-2A address a persistent connectivity gap in many of its target markets. Large portions of sub-Saharan Africa, rural South East Asia, and remote areas of Russia lack terrestrial broadband infrastructure, and satellite-delivered backhaul has proven to be a practical and relatively rapidly deployable solution for extending mobile network coverage and enterprise data services to locations where laying fiber is economically or logistically infeasible. A single high-throughput Ku-band satellite positioned at a well-chosen geostationary slot can simultaneously serve thousands of such terminals across a continent-spanning area.

Maritime and mobility connectivity, also cited as a service domain for ABS-2A, has grown in commercial importance as expectations for at-sea and in-flight internet access have risen. Vessels operating in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and adjoining waters — all within the likely footprint of a satellite at 75°E — represent a significant and recurring demand base for satellite-delivered bandwidth.

The satellite's all-electric propulsion heritage is also notable in a broader industry context. When ABS-2A launched in 2016, all-electric geostationary satellites were still a relatively recent commercial development, and the operational deployment of multiple such spacecraft helped validate the architecture for subsequent generations of operators and manufacturers. The mass efficiency gains made possible by eliminating large chemical apogee engines allowed the 2,000 kg spacecraft to carry a commercially competitive payload within launch vehicle mass constraints that might have been limiting for a conventionally propelled platform of comparable capability.

ABS-2A continues to be tracked by the United States Space Force and listed in the public orbital catalog, where its NORAD ID 41588 and COSPAR designation 2016-038A serve as its permanent identifiers in satellite-tracking databases, including LowEarth. Its stable, precisely maintained geostationary position makes it straightforward to locate computationally for antenna-pointing purposes, and its orbital elements remain a routine fixture in catalog updates issued to the global satellite operations community.