ES'HAIL 2

Es'hail 2 (also cataloged as ES'HAIL 2, NORAD ID 43700, international designator 2018-090A) is a geostationary communications satellite operating over the Middle East and North Africa region. Launched in November 2018 and built by Japan's Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, it serves a dual role that is relatively rare among commercial spacecraft: alongside its primary function as a direct-to-home broadcasting platform, it carries a dedicated amateur radio payload that has made it a landmark resource for the global ham radio community. The satellite remains in orbit today, stationed in geostationary arc at 26° East longitude.

Mission and Purpose

The primary commercial mission of Es'hail 2 is the delivery of direct-to-home television and broadband content to audiences across the Middle East and North Africa. The satellite carries a substantial transponder complement to support this function, including 24 Ku-band transponders suited for high-powered direct broadcast television and 11 Ka-band transponders oriented toward higher-throughput data services, government communications, and commercial content distribution. Together these transponders provide broad regional coverage for broadcasters and content distributors operating across a large and geographically diverse service footprint.

What sets Es'hail 2 apart from comparable regional communications satellites, however, is the inclusion of an amateur radio payload managed by AMSAT — the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation — an international organization with a long history of placing amateur payloads aboard orbital spacecraft. This amateur radio package consists of two linear transponders. The narrowband transponder provides 500 kHz of bandwidth and operates with an uplink frequency in the 2.4 GHz range and a downlink in the 10.45 GHz range, making it suited for single-sideband voice and slow-speed digital modes. The wideband transponder offers a much broader 8 MHz of bandwidth on the same frequency pairing, opening the door to amateur television and experimental wideband digital communications. These transponders are the first of their kind to be placed in geostationary orbit, a distinction that carries considerable operational significance for the amateur satellite service worldwide.

Because geostationary orbit keeps the satellite fixed relative to the Earth's surface, radio amateurs with relatively modest fixed antenna installations — as opposed to the motorized tracking systems required for low-Earth-orbit amateur satellites — can maintain continuous, uninterrupted contact through the transponders. This has substantially lowered the barrier to entry for amateur satellite operation and enabled a new class of long-distance contacts across the wide geographic swath visible from 26° East, stretching from the eastern coast of South America to Southeast Asia.

Orbit and Tracking

Es'hail 2 occupies a near-perfect geostationary orbit, as reflected in its current tracked elements. Its apogee is recorded at 35,803 km and its perigee at 35,788 km, a difference of only 15 km that indicates an orbit of exceptionally low eccentricity closely approximating a true circular geostationary path. Its orbital inclination is 0.0°, confirming that the satellite's orbital plane is essentially coincident with Earth's equatorial plane. The orbital period is 1,436.2 minutes — very close to one sidereal day — which is the defining characteristic of a geostationary orbit and the reason the satellite appears stationary when viewed from the ground.

At a mass of 5,300 kg, Es'hail 2 falls into the category of large geostationary communications satellites. Satellites in this mass class typically carry substantial onboard propellant reserves needed for both the initial injection into the geostationary slot and for north-south and east-west stationkeeping maneuvers that maintain the precise orbital position over the course of the satellite's operational life. Geostationary satellites are not generally tracked in the same way as low-Earth-orbit objects for visual observation purposes, as they sit far above the altitude range where naked-eye or binocular observation is practical. Nonetheless, Es'hail 2 is maintained in the satellite catalog under NORAD ID 43700 and continues to be monitored through standard space surveillance networks, and its orbital elements are updated regularly on tracking platforms including LowEarth.

Design and Operator

Es'hail 2 was manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, a Japanese industrial conglomerate with an established track record in spacecraft manufacturing. Mitsubishi Electric has produced a range of commercial communications satellites and has developed its own satellite bus platforms used across multiple programs. The satellite has an owner country of record as Saudi Arabia within the orbital catalog, while the amateur radio payload is operated by AMSAT.

The satellite was launched on November 14, 2018 (Eastern Standard Time), aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle, one of the workhorse rockets of the commercial launch industry. The Falcon 9 has become a standard vehicle of choice for geostationary satellite operators seeking reliable and cost-competitive access to the high-energy trajectories required to reach geostationary transfer orbit. Following launch, the satellite would have undergone a series of apogee engine firings to raise itself from the initial elliptical transfer orbit into its final circular geostationary slot, a process typical of communications satellite deployments of this class.

The inclusion of an AMSAT-operated payload on a commercial satellite of this scale is noteworthy from an engineering and programmatic standpoint. AMSAT has historically flown payloads on smaller spacecraft or as secondary payloads on launch vehicles, and the integration of a linear transponder on a large commercial platform represents a significant evolution in the organization's capacity to serve the amateur radio community from geostationary altitude.

Significance and Legacy

The amateur radio transponders aboard Es'hail 2 represent a genuine milestone in the history of the amateur satellite service. Prior to this satellite's operation, amateur radio contacts via satellite were almost exclusively conducted through low-Earth-orbit birds with orbital periods measured in tens of minutes and contact windows lasting only a few minutes at a time. The shift to a geostationary platform changes this dynamic entirely: stations within the satellite's coverage footprint have, in principle, a continuous and persistent communications link available at any time of day.

The 8 MHz wideband transponder in particular opened a new chapter for amateur satellite television and experimental broadband modes. Groups of amateur experimenters have used this channel for digital amateur television, demonstrating capabilities that had not previously been available to the amateur satellite community from a stable geostationary platform. The narrowband transponder has been used for conventional telephony-style contacts stretching thousands of kilometers, linking operators across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia simultaneously.

For the broader commercial satellite sector, Es'hail 2 reflects the continued demand for regional direct-to-home broadcasting infrastructure serving the Middle East and North Africa. The Ku-band direct broadcast capacity serves a region with a large and growing appetite for multichannel television and data services, while the Ka-band capacity positions the satellite to support higher-throughput institutional and commercial connectivity applications. The combination of commercial and amateur payloads on a single platform is a relatively rare arrangement and demonstrates that the interests of commercial operators and the amateur radio community can coexist productively within a single spacecraft architecture.

Es'hail 2 remains in active service as of the latest catalog updates, continuing to function in its geostationary slot at 26° East. Its orbital parameters show no indication of decay — geostationary satellites do not experience the atmospheric drag that gradually degrades low-Earth orbits — and operational life for satellites of this class is typically determined by onboard propellant reserves for stationkeeping rather than by any external environmental factor. No mission-end date or status change is recorded in publicly available catalogs at this time, and the satellite should be considered operationally active unless otherwise announced.

Because Es'hail 2 orbits at geostationary altitude — roughly 35,800 km above the equator — it is far too faint and distant for visual observation with standard amateur equipment. The satellite does not appear in typical bright-object observation lists, and no meaningful guidance on spotting it visually can be offered. Observers interested in interacting with Es'hail 2 will do so not through optical means but through its amateur radio transponders, for which uplink and downlink frequencies, operating guidelines, and community resources are widely available through AMSAT and affiliated amateur radio organizations.