SSL

SSL, is the leading provider of geostationary commercial satellites, with experience building and integrating some of the world’s most powerful and complex satellites and spacecraft systems. The company has a long history of delivering reliable satellites and spacecraft systems for commercial and government customers around the world and currently has more geostationary commercial capacity on orbit than any other manufacturer.

SSL works closely with satellite operators to provide spacecraft for a broad range of services including television and radio distribution, digital audio radio, broadband Internet, and mobile communications. Approximately 25 percent of the total U.S. Government leased commercial transponders are carried on SSL-built satellites. The company’s SSL 1300 spacecraft has been proven over decades of on-orbit operation and provides a highly flexible, modular platform for incremental technology advances, with the industry’s highest power capability.

SSL has unprecedented experience with Ka-band and satellites for broadband communications and is the leader in putting broadband capacity in space.  The company has been building Ka-band payloads for four decades and has experience building next generation satellites that provide more than 100 gigabit per second capacity.

Beginning with the world’s first communications satellite, Courier 1B, launched in 1960, SSL has manufactured more than 250 satellites, delivering in excess of 2,000 years of on-orbit service. Much of that total has been achieved by the three-axis-stabilized 1300 series, and more than one-third of those years were achieved by spacecraft that provided service beyond their contractual lives.

In addition to complete satellites, SSL was the exclusive provider of batteries to the International Space Station for more than 10 years and has provided the U.S. Government with a variety of instruments including antennas on the Voyager spacecraft and a ranging system on the GRACE satellites. SSL’s commercial platform has also been leveraged for numerous unique applications, such as GOES Weather satellites, Air Traffic Control in Japan, and a propulsion system for NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE).

The company’s reputation as a world leader is the result of its unparalleled commitment to mission assurance and its ability to provide advanced solutions that meet mission objectives based on space-proven heritage designs. Billions of people around the world depend on SSL-built satellites every day.