SPACEWAY 3, the world’s first satellite to employ onboard switching, was successfully launched on August 14 at 7:44 p.m. ET from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Arianespace, the leader in international commercial launch services, used its Ariane 5 heavy launcher to lift the satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Owned and operated by Hughes, SPACEWAY 3 will operate in the globally assigned Ka-band spectrum and employ high-performance onboard digital processing, packet switching, and spot-beam technology. This “switch in the sky” will enable communications directly between terminals at customer sites in a single hop, without requiring a central hub.

“This is the day we’ve all been working so hard for,” said Pradman Kaul, chairman and CEO of Hughes. “With its unique capabilities, SPACEWAY will usher in a new era in satellite communications, delivering a wide range of new high-speed communication services for IP data and multimedia applications to North American enterprise, consumer, and government customers.”