TS News - McDonnell Douglas To Launch Thor-III

• from: owner-ts-news@tele-satellite.com
• Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 14:58:35 +0900

TELE-satellit News, 4 August 1997

McDonnell Douglas To Launch Thor-III
  OSLO, Norway, 1997/08/04 (TS) -- McDonnell Douglas has been awarded a
contract to launch Telenor of Norway's Thor III communications satellite in
July 1998 on a Delta II expendable rocket.  Hughes Space and Communications
International, Inc. and Telenor announced the order. The launch will
support an August on-orbit delivery to Telenor, which will use Thor III to
expand its services to European television markets.

  A Delta II three-stage model 7925 rocket will boost the Thor III Hughes
HS 376 model spacecraft into a geosynchronous transfer orbit.  The
satellite initially will have 14 active Ku-band transponders to provide
direct-to-home television programming to the Scandinavian countries and to
the nations of central and eastern Europe.

  McDonnell Douglas Director of NASA and Commercial Delta Programs Darryl
C. Van Dorn said, "We are pleased to be able to team with Hughes and
Telenor once again to continue to expand TV services in Europe.  The Delta
team is proud to have been selected for this important mission.  We have
launched more than 40 satellites built by Hughes - including Telenor's Thor
I and Thor II - and look forward to adding to that record with Thor III."

  It will join Thor II, launched May 20 of this year from Cape  Canaveral
Air Station, Fla., and Thor I, which was boosted into orbit in August 1990
as BSB-R2, but renamed Thor I when Telenor purchased it in 1992. Thor II
provides up to 75 digital TV channels to the Telenor system, and Thor I
currently serves more than 750,000 customers with dish antennas and
additional cable TV viewers throughout Scandinavia.

(c)TELE-satellit 1997. All rights reserved.

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