Artemis (satellite)

Artemis

Model of Artemis Satellite in original size.
Operator	European Space Agency
COSPAR ID	2001-029A
SATCAT no.	26863
Mission duration	16 years
Start of mission
Launch date	12 July 2001, 21:58 (2001-07-12UTC21:58Z) UTC
Rocket	Ariane 5G V142
Launch site	Kourou ELA-3
Contractor	Arianespace
End of mission
Disposal	Placed in Graveyard orbit
Deactivated	November 2017
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Graveyard orbit
Regime	Graveyard orbit

Artemis was a geostationary earth orbit satellite (GEOS) for telecommunications, built by Alenia Spazio for ESA. The Artemis satellite operated at the 21.5E orbital position^[1] until 2016, when it was moved to 123E to cover the L-Band spectrum rights for Indonesia's Ministry of Defense.^[2]

In November 2017, Artemis was retired and replaced to a graveyard orbit.^[3][4]

The mission was planned for many years, with launch initially intended for 1995 and slipping; it was intended for launch on Ariane 5 but at one point there were suggestions that a Japanese H-II rocket might be used.^[5]

Launched by an Ariane 5 rocket on 12 July 2001, it originally reached an orbit much lower than planned (590 km x 17487 km) due to a malfunction in the launch vehicle's upper stage.^[6] It was remotely reconfigured to reach its intended station by means of a novel procedure.^[7] First, over the course of about a week, most of its chemical fuel was used to put it in a 31,000 km circular orbit (by raising first the apogee then the perigee, going via a 590 km x 31000 km orbit). Then, its RIT-10 gridded ion thruster — originally intended for station keeping and for firing a few minutes at a time — was instead kept running for most of 18 months, pushing the spacecraft into an outward spiral trajectory. It gained altitude at the rate of about 15 km per day, until it reached the intended geostationary orbit.^[8]

On January 1, 2014, Avanti Communications, a London-based company, took the ownership of the satellite.^[9]