Last Thursday 02-21-13, partial assembly of telecommunications satellite Arsat-1 was successfully completed at INVAP headquarters in Bariloche. This satellite is the first of three of the kind that ARSAT and INVAP are manufacturing in Argentina under the “System Argentine Geostationary Satellite Telecommunications”.
The procedure, called “mating”, was executed by INVAP technicians, with monitoring and support from the staff of ARSAT and Thales Alenia Space companies, and consists in coupling the communications module with the the service platform.
Inside the Communications Module is the payload which contains the transponders plus all the associated electronics and communication antennas. This Payload is responsible for receiving, amplifying and retransmitting RF signals, so it is the essential element to provide a telecommunications service.
To successfully perform the operation it was necessary that all available staff there worked in dedicated mode, continuous, day and night, being the first 10 hours dedicated to the assembly of the modules and the following hours remaining subject to and adjustments between the two modules.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkcsdDs-FR0|680|415
