Europe*Star Ltd, headquartered in London, was a joint venture between Alcatel Spacecom (Thales Alenia Space) of France and Loral Space & Communications of the United States. Alcatel was the prime contractor and Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) provided the satellite bus, and integrated and tested the satellite in Palo Alto, CA.

The satellite commenced services at the start of 2001, and the innovative Europe*Star-1 satellite has five high-performance beams covering Europe, Southern Africa, the Middle-East, the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia. Its Europe*Star B satellite provides additional capacity for markets in Central and Eastern Europe.

Europe*Star-1 satellite was sold to PanAmSat in July 2005, and changed the name to PAS 12. Intelsat acquired PanAmSat in 2007 and changed the name of the PAS satellite to Intelsat-12.

Europe*Star-1 was launched on October 29^th, 2000 on an Ariane 44LP rocket booster operated by launch operator Arianespace from their Kourou Space Port launch complex in French Guyana.