Orbital Sciences has announced that it has been selected by Intelsat to design, build and deliver the Intelsat-18 (IS-18) commercial communications satellite.

The satellite will be based on Orbital's flight-proven STAR-2 platform and will generate approximately 4.9 kilowatts of payload power. The IS-18 satellite will carry 24 C-band transponders to cover the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and 12 Ku-band transponders to provide services to the United States, French Polynesia, Australia, New Caledonia and other Pacific Islands.

Following its launch and deployment, the spacecraft will be located in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) at 180 degrees East longitude.

This latest order for one of Orbital's GEO communications satellites is the 24th to be ordered by customers throughout the world and will be the eighth in the Intelsat fleet. The IS-18 satellite will replace Intelsat's IS-701 spacecraft.

"The order from Intelsat for the IS-18 satellite continues the close collaboration between our two companies, enabling our valued customer to deploy the most efficient fleet of spacecraft possible to deliver high-quality services to their customers," said Mr. Michael Larkin, Orbital's Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Space Systems Group.

"So far this year, a total of three STAR satellites have been purchased by new and existing customers, solidifying Orbital's position as the leading provider of smaller-class GEO commercial satellites in the world," Mr. Larkin added.

"In addition to the strong new order activity, our manufacturing and launch preparations are also in high gear. The AMC-21 satellite was recently launched for SES Americom and we are making preparations to ship the NSS-9 satellite to the launch site in the coming weeks for SES New Skies."

The Intelsat-18 spacecraft is the third order to be placed in 2008 for satellites based on Orbital's STAR-2 platform.

In April, the company announced that SES Americom had ordered the AMC-1R spacecraft and in May, Orbital announced that it had teamed with Thales Alenia Space for the STAR-2 based Koreasat-6 satellite to be built for KT Corporation of the Republic of Korea.