STAR Bus

Artist impression of Optus D1, built on the Orbital STAR Bus platform

STAR Bus is a satellite platform developed by Thomas van der Heyden co-founder of CTAI, later sold to and manufactured by Orbital Sciences Corporation with an apogee kick motor to place a communications satellite into geostationary orbit, a thruster to provide the satellite with orbital station-keeping for a 15 year mission, and solar arrays to provide the satellite payload with 5 kW of electrical power.

Also see STAR-2.

History

The first satellite program based on the STAR Bus platform, developed by Thomas van der Heyden for the Indonesian Direct Broadcast program IndoVision, was IndoStar-1, which was launched in November 1997.

References