MEASAT Global Berhad (MEASAT) has announced that its MEASAT-3 satellite will be retired soon. This comes after a major outage that occurred starting 21st June 2021.
According to MEASAT’s statement, “Despite maintaining continuous telemetry and command control of MEASAT-3, further testing and recovery efforts found that the satellite could not re-enter service. The satellite will be de-orbited in the following weeks.”
Last month, MEASAT has successfully migrated MEASAT-3’s services to other MEASAT and third-party satellites that serve the region. The transponders were deactivated to prevent interference with other satellites. Besides MEASAT-3, the company also has MEASAT-3a and MEASAT-3b on the 91.5°E orbital slot.
![](https://cdnen.soyacincau.com/2021/06/210624-MEASAT-3-coverage-footprint.jpg)
MEASAT-3 is a Boeing 601 satellite that was launched in December 2006. It is equipped with C-band and Ku-band transponders that cover over 100 countries across Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The 15-year-old satellite along with MEASAT-3a were meant to be replaced with an upcoming MEASAT-3d satellite which is currently scheduled to launch in early 2022. MEASAT-3d uses the Airbus Eurostar E3000 satellite and it is expected to provide in-orbit satellite redundancy on the 91.5°E hotslot. Besides offering Direct-to-Home TV services, the new satellite can offer broadband connectivity up to 100Mbps and deliver 4K and 8K video content distribution.
![](https://cdnen.soyacincau.com/2021/08/210806-MEASAT-3-live-satellite.jpg)
The MCMC had earlier revealed that the satellite connectivity issue was caused by a thruster failure. Initially, services were restored after using backup thrusters, however, the satellite continues drifting westward. In mid-July, MEASAT-3 had drifted from 91.5° to 84.52°. Today, a satellite tracker revealed that it has drifted further to 76.06°.