Athena-Fidus


Athena-Fidus is a French-Italian telecommunication satellite providing high-throughput secure communications to both nation's armed forces and their emergency services. It was manufactured by Thales Alenia Space under the supervision of CNES, the DGA and the Italian Space Agency. It complements the lower-throughput but more secure Syracuse 3 satellites. The satellite has a wet mass of 3 tonnes and was placed on Geostationary orbit in 2014. Its expected lifetime is 15 years.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing contract was awarded in February 2010 to Thales Alenia Space. The satellite bus is a Spacebus 4000B2, smash in Cannes Mandelieu Space Center.

Launch

The satellite was launched by a Ariane 5 ECA rocket on February, 6th 2014 during the VA217 mission. After some on-orbit tests, official satellite commissioning took place on March, 14th 2014.

Payload

Although this is a common program, each country operates its own share of the payload. The satellite provides an encrypted, 3 Gbit/s throughput, using mostly Ka-band links. It carries 14 antennas including 7 mobile spot antennas, enabling positioning of steerable 1750-km diameter spot beams over operational theaters requiring a high bandwidth. France owns five beams and Italy, two.
The system will enable communication with deployable ground stations, and with drones.

Ground Segment

The ground segment for the French part of the Capacity is called Comcept. Comcept will provide a network of fixed and deployable ground stations using full-IP technology. The system includes high-data-rate ground stations which are installed in a transportable shelter and provide a speed of approximately 10 Mbit/s. The Comcept system is provided by Airbus Defence and Space and Actia Sodielec.

Russian espionage

On September 7, 2018, during a visit to the Toulouse Space Center, the Ministry of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, accused Russia of having committed "an act of espionage" in 2017 against the satellite to try to intercept secure communications.