Optus D3 is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n geostationary communications satellite

Communications satellite

A communications satellite is an artificial satellite stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications...

, which is operated by Optus

Optus

SingTel Optus Pty Limited is the second largest telecommunications company in Australia, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications...

 and provides communications services to Australasia

Australasia

Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes...

. D3 was the third Optus-D

Optus fleet of satellites

This is a list of the satellites operated by Optus, an Australian telecommunications company. The satellite communications facility is located at Belrose on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.-A-Class:*Satellite Type: Hughes HS-376...

 satellite to be launched. It is a 2401 kilograms (5,293.3 lb) satellite, which was constructed by Orbital Sciences Corporation

Orbital Sciences Corporation

Orbital Sciences Corporation is an American company which specializes in the manufacturing and launch of satellites. Its Launch Systems Group is heavily involved with missile defense launch systems...

 based on the Star-2.4 satellite bus

Satellite bus

A satellite bus or spacecraft bus is the general model on which multiple-production satellite spacecraft are often based. The bus is the infrastructure of a spacecraft, usually providing locations for the payload .They are most commonly used for geosynchronous satellites, particularly...

, with the same configuration as the earlier Optus D2 satellite.

It was launched, along with the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese JCSAT-12

JCSAT-12

JCSAT-RA, previously known as JCSAT-12, is a Japanese geostationary communications satellite, which is operated by JSAT Corporation. It was ordered to replace the JCSAT-11 satellite which was lost in a launch failure on a Proton-M/Briz-M rocket in 2007, and is currently used as an on-orbit spare...

 satellite, by Arianespace

Arianespace

Arianespace SA is a French company founded in 1980 as the world's first commercial space transportation company. It undertakes the production, operation, and marketing of the Ariane 5 rocket launcher as part of the Ariane programme....

. An Ariane 5ECA

Ariane 5

Ariane 5 is, as a part of Ariane rocket family, an expendable launch system used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit or low Earth orbit . Ariane 5 rockets are manufactured under the authority of the European Space Agency and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales...

 rocket was used for the launch, which occurred from ELA-3

ELA-3

ELA-3, short for Ensemble de Lancement Ariane 3 , is a launch pad and associated facilities at the Centre Spatial Guyanais in French Guyana. ELA-3 is operated by Arianespace as part of the expendable launch system for Ariane 5 rockets...

 at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou

Kourou

Kourou is a commune in French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America.Kourou is the location of the Guiana Space Centre, France and ESA's main spaceport.-Geography:...

, French Guiana

French Guiana

French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...

. The launch took place at 22:09 GMT on 21 August 2009, at the start of a 60 minute launch window

Launch window

Launch window is a term used in spaceflight to describe a time period in which a particular launch vehicle must be launched. If the rocket does not launch within the "window", it has to wait for the next window....

.

Optus D3 separated from its carrier rocket into a geosynchronous transfer orbit, from which it raised itself to geostationary orbit

Geostationary orbit

A geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit directly above the Earth's equator , with a period equal to the Earth's rotational period and an orbital eccentricity of approximately zero. An object in a geostationary orbit appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers...

 using an IHI -500-N apogee motor. It has a design life of fifteen years, and carries thirty two J band transponder

Transponder

In telecommunication, the term transponder has the following meanings:...

s (US IEEE Ku band).