ASTRA 1P (SES-24)

ASTRA 1P, also catalogued under NORAD ID 60086 and international designator 2024-115A, is a geostationary communications satellite operated by Luxembourg-based satellite fleet operator SES S.A. Constructed by Thales Alenia Space and launched in June 2024, the spacecraft occupies one of Europe's most strategically significant orbital slots, serving as a cornerstone of direct-to-home broadcast television delivery across the continent. With a mass of 5,000 kg, it ranks among the heavier commercial communications satellites in the current SES fleet.

Mission and Purpose

ASTRA 1P is positioned at 19.2° East longitude, a geostationary slot that SES has operated as its primary European broadcasting position for decades. This location has long served as the anchor of satellite television distribution across Europe, carrying hundreds of channels in standard definition, high definition, and increasingly ultra-high-definition formats to tens of millions of households. The satellite was designed to sustain and enhance this broadcasting capacity, and is understood to be the most powerful satellite yet deployed at that position — a distinction that reflects both the growing demand for broadcast bandwidth and the advances in spacecraft design that Thales Alenia Space has incorporated into the platform.

While the specific details of ASTRA 1P's payload configuration — including the number of transponders, their frequency bands, and contracted capacity — are not recorded in the public orbital catalog, the satellite's role is consistent with SES's long-standing strategy of maintaining a high-power, high-capacity presence at 19.2° East. Satellites at this slot have historically provided the dominant means by which European viewers receive free-to-air and subscription television via small-dish home receivers, and ASTRA 1P continues that function. The mission type and operational status are not specified in the public catalog record maintained for this object.

SES operates ASTRA 1P under the Astra brand, which has been synonymous with European satellite broadcasting since the late 1980s. The naming convention places this satellite in the lineage of a long series of Astra spacecraft, each successive generation bringing greater power, broader coverage, and improved spectral efficiency. The "1P" designation identifies it as part of the Astra 1 series, which collectively serves the 19.2° East position and the European broadcasting market it anchors.

Orbit and Tracking

ASTRA 1P occupies a near-perfect geostationary orbit, as reflected in its tracked orbital parameters. Its apogee stands at 35,799 km and its perigee at 35,792 km, placing it in an exceptionally circular orbit with a difference of only 7 km between the two extremes — a hallmark of a well-maintained geostationary spacecraft. The orbital inclination is just 0.1°, meaning the satellite sits almost exactly over the equatorial plane, and its orbital period of 1,436.2 minutes is essentially synchronous with Earth's rotation.

These figures collectively confirm that ASTRA 1P maintains a fixed apparent position relative to ground-based antennas and dishes pointed toward it. A satellite in true geostationary orbit at zero inclination and a perfectly circular orbit would appear completely stationary when viewed from any fixed point on Earth's surface. At 0.1° inclination, ASTRA 1P traces an extremely small figure-eight pattern — known as an analemma — in the sky as seen from the ground, but this excursion is so slight as to be imperceptible to all but the most precisely pointed tracking systems. For the millions of fixed satellite dishes across Europe aimed at 19.2° East, the satellite's signal is effectively constant and uninterrupted.

ASTRA 1P was launched on 19 June 2024 (20 June UTC), carried to orbit aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle. Following deployment from the launch vehicle, the spacecraft would have undergone a series of orbit-raising maneuvers using its onboard propulsion system to transition from the transfer orbit in which it was released into its final geostationary station. As of the time of this writing, the satellite remains in orbit and operational, with no decay or reentry date recorded.

Design and Operator

ASTRA 1P was built by Thales Alenia Space, the Franco-Italian aerospace manufacturer with extensive experience in the design and production of large geostationary telecommunications satellites. Thales Alenia Space has supplied spacecraft to many of the world's leading satellite operators and is among the most prolific manufacturers in the commercial GEO sector. The company's satellite platforms are known for their high-power electrical systems and large deployable reflector antennas, both of which are important for achieving the kind of broadcast performance expected at a premium orbital slot like 19.2° East.

The satellite's mass of 5,000 kg places it in the category of large geostationary spacecraft. At launch, a significant portion of this mass would have consisted of propellant required for orbit-raising and for the station-keeping maneuvers that will be performed throughout the satellite's operational lifetime. Geostationary satellites require periodic north-south and east-west station-keeping burns to counteract the gravitational perturbations from the Moon, the Sun, and the slight asymmetry of Earth's gravitational field, all of which would otherwise cause the satellite to drift from its assigned slot over time. The propellant budget for these maneuvers largely determines the satellite's design lifetime.

SES S.A., headquartered in Betzdorf, Luxembourg, is one of the world's largest satellite operators by fleet size and capacity. The company operates both GEO satellites under the Astra and SES brand names and medium Earth orbit satellites through its O3b mPOWER constellation, giving it a broad range of capabilities spanning broadcast, broadband, and mobility markets. The Astra brand specifically is associated with direct broadcast services, and the 19.2° East slot is the flagship position within that business. SES is registered in Luxembourg and is majority-owned by a combination of the Luxembourg government and public shareholders.

Significance and Context

The deployment of ASTRA 1P in mid-2024 reflects the continued importance of geostationary broadcast satellites in the European media landscape, even as internet-delivered streaming services have reshaped how many viewers consume television content. The 19.2° East position remains one of the most densely utilized orbital slots in the world, and maintaining capacity there with each new generation of spacecraft is central to SES's commercial strategy.

As the most powerful satellite yet placed at 19.2° East, ASTRA 1P represents an incremental but meaningful advance in the broadcast capability available from that position. Greater transmit power enables stronger signal levels at the ground, which in turn can support smaller receive dishes, better reception in marginal coverage areas, or the accommodation of more efficient, higher-order modulation schemes that allow more data — and therefore more television channels or higher-quality video — to be carried within a given amount of radio-frequency spectrum.

The Astra 1 series has been in continuous operation at 19.2° East for well over three decades. Over that time, the slot has grown into a major platform for European public and commercial broadcasters, pay-TV operators, and streaming content providers that distribute their services via satellite to cable head-ends and directly to consumers. ASTRA 1P's arrival adds capacity and power to an already well-established infrastructure rather than pioneering an entirely new mission, but its role in sustaining that infrastructure should not be understated. Geostationary broadcast satellites of this class have operational lifetimes typically measured in fifteen or more years, meaning ASTRA 1P is expected to remain a fixture of European broadcasting well into the late 2030s or beyond.

The satellite's successful launch aboard a SpaceX vehicle is also noteworthy as an illustration of the continued diversification of launch services used by established European satellite operators. SES has made use of multiple launch providers over the years, and the use of a SpaceX Falcon-class vehicle for this mission is consistent with a broader industry trend toward commercial launch competition. Specific details of the launch contract and the launch vehicle variant are not recorded in the publicly available orbital catalog entry for this object.

Orbital Visibility

ASTRA 1P is a geostationary satellite and, as such, does not pass across the sky in the way that low Earth orbit objects do. From any given location in Europe, it remains fixed at a constant point in the southeastern sky (for most northern European observers) or more nearly overhead for observers closer to the equator. It is not a target for casual naked-eye observation or for satellite-spotting in the conventional sense, and no favorable pass predictions are applicable to it. Observers with optical telescopes and precise pointing capability can locate geostationary satellites as faint, slow-drifting points of light in long-exposure photography, and ASTRA 1P at its assigned slot of 19.2° East is accessible to such techniques for suitably equipped observers across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.