May 19 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian telecommunications company Bulsatcom said on Friday its geostationary communications satellite, BulgariaSat-1 - the country's first – is scheduled for launch on June 15.
Interest in the satellite is getting higher as the launch date approaches, Maxim Zayakov, CEO of CEO of Bulsatcom and its affiliate BulgariaSat, said in a statement.
There is significant interest from Romania, Greece, Israel and Germany, with talks with some of those countries already in the final stage, he added.
Some 46% of the satellite’s capacity will be used by Bulsatcom and its subsidiaries on the Bulgarian and Serbian markets.
The project’s estimated cost is $235 million (210.2 million euro). The funding has been provided by the Export–Import Bank of the United States and a consortium of European lenders led by Deutsche Bank and including the EBRD, Raiffeisen, CIBank and Citibank.
"It cannot be ruled out that in the next 4 or 5 years you may hear about a second satellite project of ours," Zayakov said in the statement.
It will take BulgariaSat-1 5 hours and 50 minutes from its launch until the departure from the second stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The satellite will be positioned into orbit at 36,000 km above the Earth. Within a month of the launch, the ground control room will carry out the necessary tests and settings before the satellite can become operationally ready to broadcast.
Bulsatcom is a leading telecommunications company and the largest pay-TV services provider in Bulgaria.
($ = 0.8946 euro)