In January 2005 Nordic Satellite AB (NSAB) awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin for the design and manufacturing of the Sirius 4 satellite. Sirius 4 would be a multi-mission Ku/Ka-band satellite to be built on Lockheed Martin’s reliable A2100AXS platform with a minimum service life of 15 years. The spacecraft was designed to be compatible with all flight-proven commercial launch vehicles and NSAB intends to select the respective launch service provider later on in the year. The satellite will be deployed at NSAB’s orbital position of 5° East in the second quarter of 2007.

The first mission of Sirius 4 will be to provide replacement capacity for NSAB’s existing Sirius 2 and Sirius 3 satellites in the Nordic and Baltic markets as well as to enhance coverage in Eastern Europe and Russia. This mission is supported by 46 active Ku-band transponders in the BSS and FSS frequency bands.

As a second mission Sirius 4 would provide one wide beam Ka-Band transponder for interactive applications in Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

The third mission of Sirius 4 was to provide a sub-Saharan Africa beam complementing existing (Astra 2B, AMC 12 (also intially called Astra 4A)) African coverage within the SES GLOBAL fleet. This mission was supported by a payload consisting of 6 active Ku-Band transponders and an additional Ka-Band transponder for inter-connections between Africa and Europe. As the AMC-12 satellite was transferred to New Skies Satellite, the Astra 4A designation had been allocated to the sub-Saharan Africa beam of Sirius 4.

Astra 4A/Sirius 4 was launched on November 15^th, 2007, on a Proton M booster rocket operated by launch operator ILS from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.