Some 24 years ago Telesat’s Anik F1 was launched. It has now been retired to a safe ‘graveyard’ orbit a few hundred kilometers above the normal geostationary arc.
When Canada’s Anik F1 was sent into space in November 2000, it was the most powerful communications satellite ever built. Now this satellite is in its final resting place more than 36,000 km above earth.
It was ordered in March 1998. It is based on Boeing’s BSS-702 model. The satellite carries 84 active transponders: 36 in C-band and 48 in Ku-band. The spacecraft provides general telecommunications services for North and South America. The satellite was designed for an end-of-life power of 16 kW. Anik F1 was launched in late 2000 on an Ariane-44L rocket.
Anik F1 suffers from a generic failure of the early Hughes-built BSS-702 model: the fogging of the concentrator mirrors on the solar arrays which leads to reduced available power. Anik F1 was replaced by Anik F1R with Anik F1 switching to serving only South America.
The Telesat fleet of Anik craft are a series of geostationary communications satellites launched for Telesat Canada for television, voice and data in Canada and other parts of the world, from 1972 through 2013. Some of the later satellites in the series remain operational in orbit, while others have been retired to a graveyard orbit.
The naming of the satellite was determined by a national contest, and was won by Julie-Frances Czapla of Saint-Léonard, Québec. In Inuktitut, Anik means ‘brother’.
