Improved Reliability, Increasing Sophistication

摘要

Commercial satellite builder Space Systems/Loral says reliability of today's satellites - botb Loral's and those made by its competitors - is much higher than it was 20 years ago despite the increasing sophistication of satellite payloads. In 1991, telecommunications satellites in orbit carried a combined 2,000 transponders. The failure rate was slightly more than 3 percent. Since then, with nearly five times the number of transponders, the failure rate has dropped to just over 0.5 percent.