EchoStar Corp.'s Hughes Network Systems said March 21 it had ordered an all-Ka-band consumer broadband satellite for North America - with 50 percent more capacity than the 100-plus gigabits per second of throughput offered by the company's Jupiter 1 satellite. The new satellite, to be called EchoStar 19/Jupiter 2, will be built by Space Systems/Loral of Palo Alto, Calif., and is scheduled for launch in 2016 aboard a European Ariane 5 rocket. EchoStar has a multilaunch agreement with Europe's Arianespace consortium that covers this period. The satellite is expected to weigh around 6,300 kilograms at launch, light enough to share a launch with another telecommunications satellite under the same Ariane 5 fairing. Its 120 spot beams and more than 150 gigabits of throughput will cover an area that is triple the area served by the Jupiter 1/EchoStar 17 satellite, Hughes President Pradman P. Kaul said in a March 21 interview.
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