Intelsat tells ANN that it is pursuing a recovery mission of the Intelsat Americas 7 satellite, which experienced a sudden and unusual electrical distribution anomaly on November 28. As a result of an intensive recovery effort by the Intelsat technical team, contact and control of the satellite has been regained. Service restoration is underway, with several key customers expected to be operational on IA-7 by the time this is read. Although testing of the satellite's capabilities is still underway, operations have been restored on a portion of the satellite's transponders.

Prior to IA-7's reactivation, the affected Intelsat customers had all been offered alternate capacity at different orbital locations, with many customers restored on alternate Intelsat capacity within hours of Sunday morning's anomaly. The exact cause of the anomaly is still being investigated, in cooperation with Space Systems/ Loral, the satellite's manufacturer, and Loral Skynet, each of whom participated in the recovery effort.

"Our first priority in this event was to address the needs of our existing customers and their end-users," said Conny Kullman, Chief Executive Officer of Intelsat, Ltd. "As a global operator with 28 satellites in our network, Intelsat's overall flexibility and ability to match available capacity to customer requirements served us well in quickly providing alternate solutions. We are keeping Zeus Holdings Limited, Intelsat's prospective acquirer, fully apprised of developments as they occur with respect to the IA-7 satellite and we understand Zeus is continuing its evaluation of the situation."

FMI: www.intelsat.com