Athena-Fidus is a French-Italian telecommunications satellite that uses state-of-the-art civil broadband Internet technologies. Funded jointly by French space agency CNES, French defense procurement agency DGA, Italian space agency ASI and the Italian Ministry of Defense, it provides communications services to both armed forces and civil security agencies in France and Italy. Program prime contractor Thales Alenia Space produced Athena-Fidus using its Spacebus 4000B2 platform, with the satellite equipped to deploy the latest civil telecom standards - DVB-RCS and DVB-S2 - to ensure optimum transmission capacity and service availability.

Facts in Brief

Launch Date: 2014-02-06
Launch Vehicle: Ariane 5 ECA
Launch Site: Kourou, French Guiana
Mass: 3080.0 kg