message from space digest press release no paris april users of esa s olympus satellite report on the outcome of their experiments today europe s space telecommunications sector would not be blossoming as it now does had olympus not provided a testbed for the technologies and services of the s this summarises the general conclusions of speakers and participants at the conference on olympus utilisation held in seville on april the conference was organised by the european space agency esa and the spanish centre for the development of industrial technology cdti olympus has been particularly useful in bringing satellite telecommunications to thousands of new users thanks to satellite terminals with very small antennas vsats olympus experiments have tested data transmission videoconferencing business television distance teaching and rural telephony to give but a few examples in opening the door to new telecommunications services which could not be accommodated on the crowded lower frequency bands olympus was the first satellite over europe to offer capacity in the ghz band in establishing two way data relay links olympus received for the first time in europe over several months high volume data from a low earth orbiting spacecraft and then distributed it to various centres in europe when olympus was launched on july it was the world s largest telecommunications satellite and no other satellite has yet equalled its versatility in combining four different payloads in a wide variety of frequency bands olympus users range from individual experimenters to some of the world s largest businesses access to the satellite is given in order to test new telecommunications techniques or services over the past four years some companies and organisations made use of this opportunity as well as over members of the eurostep distance learning organisation as the new technologies and services tested by these olympus users enter the commercial market they then make use of operational satellites such as those of eutelsat olympus utilisation will continue through and when the spacecraft will run out of fuel as it approaches the end of its design life
