Mar 4 1982
From The Space Library
NASA launched INTELSAT 5-F4 for the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT) from Cape Canaveral at 7:23 p.m. EST on an Atlas Centaur into a transfer orbit with 35,953-kilometer apogee, 165. 8-kilometer perigee, and 24° inclination. INTELSAT would fire an apogee motor to put the communications satellite into a near-geosynchronous orbit for =testing before moving it over the Indian Ocean to provide communications between Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East.
This fourth of the INTELSAT 5 series built by Ford Aerospace had a capacity of 12,000 voice circuits plus two, television channels. INTELSAT's global system consisted of a space segment (10 satellites in synchronous orbit) and a ground segment (295 communications antennas at 242 ground stations in 129 countries and territories). The combined system provided more than 800 links between ground stations, with about 8,500 international voice circuits in full-time use, plus telegraph, telex, and television. (NASA MOR-491-203-82-04 [prelaunch] Feb 25/82, [postlaunch] Mar 25/82; INTELSAT Release 82-4-1)
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