Astra 31.5°E
group of co-located communications satellites
Astra 31.5°E is the name for the group of Astra communications satellites co-located at the 31.5° east position in the Clarke Belt owned and operated by SES based in Betzdorf, Luxembourg. 31.5° east is SES' newest orbital location serving Europe (the others being at 19.2° east, 28.2° east, 23.5° east, and 5° east).
The first satellites to commercially exploit this position were the Astra 5A and Astra 1D craft, which provided for services downlinking in the 10.70 GHz-12.50 GHz range of the Ku band across Europe, Western Russia and the Middle East.
Satellite craft in use
Current
-
Previous
Optus A3 (launched 1987, retired)
Astra 1D (launched 1994, retired)
Astra 1E (launched 1995, retired)
Astra 1G (launched 1997, retired)
Astra 5A (launched 1997, failed in orbit)
Astra 5B (launched 2014)
Astra 2B (launched 2000, retired)
Astra 2C (launched 2001)
Market
Astra 31.5°E is SES' newest satellite position, intended to develop the markets for direct-to-home (DTH) standard definition and high definition TV and radio broadcasting, interactive TV, cable contribution, and DTT and other terrestrial feeds in Eastern Europe and the Middle East – the latter not served by Astra satellites before.
Countries included within the intended market for this position, include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Iran, Jordan, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Tunisia, Turkey, and Ukraine.
The pan-European beam of Astra 5A provided capacity for cable distribution, DTT and other terrestrial feeds, while 5A's CEE beam provided a high-power footprint for the DTH market.
Following the failure of Astra 5A, its replacement first by Astra 2C and then by Astra 1G has provided similar coverage and, as of July 2010, there are eight transponders leased on this satellite, including one to provide IP backbone services to small and medium-sized ISPs in the Middle East and Caucasus region where terrestrial telecommunications infrastructures are underdeveloped.
In December 2010, SES announced two agreements for the lease of capacity on Astra 1G. The first was with the Ukrainian state-owned company, Ukrkosmos, to provide capacity at 31.5°E for broadcasting direct to Ukrainian homes and to cable head ends and terrestrial networks. The Ukrkosmos platform includes the channels UTR, Kultura, KDRTRK, Sport 1, Sport 2, Malyatko TV and Menu TV. The second agreement was with Central European Media Enterprises (CME) which contracted a transponder on Astra 1G for distribution of services to cable head ends in Romania and Bulgaria, starting in January 2011. CME provides TV channels including Pro TV, Pro TV International, Acasa, Pro Cinema, Sport.ro and MTV Romania to Romania and bTV, bTV Cinema, bTV Comedy, PRO.BG and RING.BG in Bulgaria, and is the "anchor customer" for Astra's 31.5°E slot.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Astra 31.5°E” is group of co-located communications satellites. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Astra, group and co-located, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “group of co-located communications satellites” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q4811144. Authority coordinates are 0.000, 31.500. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1994, 1995 and 1997.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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This entry incorporates text from “Astra 31.5°E” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.