San Francisco: Elon Musk’s SpaceX has successfully deployed Indonesia’s new communications satellite into orbit, the company said on Monday.
The SATRIA-1 telecommunications satellite lifted off on a Falcon 9 rocket at 6:21 p.m. EDT (3:51 a.m. IST) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday.
SATRIA-1 (short for “Satellite of the Republic of Indonesia”) will be operated for the Indonesian government by the Indonesian company PSN.
“Deployment of PSN SATRIA confirmed,” SpaceX wrote on Twitter.
The PSN SATRIA mission marked the 12th launch and landing for the Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G, mPOWER-a, and four Starlink missions, the company said on its website.
According to The Jakarta Post, the $550 million spacecraft “is envisioned to boost connectivity inclusion in the country, providing free Internet connection to 150,000 public facilities, including schools, regional government offices and health facilities”.
“SATRIA-1 will have a throughput capacity of 150 billion bits per second, three times the capacity of the nine telecommunication satellites that Indonesia currently uses,” it added.
