February 26, 2021 – Satelit Nusantara Tiga (SNT) and Thales Alenia Space announce today the financial closing to fully develop the SATRIA program dedicated to reduce the digital divide over Indonesia. This crucial milestone follows the September 2020 signature of a Preliminary Work Agreement allowing to start the activities. Thales Alenia Space, acting as prime contractor for this program, initially signed on July 2019 for a consortium led by the domestic satellite operator Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN) on behalf of Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kominfo), will deliver the High Throughput Satellite (HTS) based on its Spacebus NEO 200 full electric platform and fitted with a fifth-generation digital processor (5G). The company will also be in charge to provide two satellite control centers (main and backup), the telecommand and telemetry stations, and the ground mission segment linked to the fully processed payload. Since early September, the company has implemented all the planned contractual steps so far, including the preliminary design phases and has started the fabrication of the structure hosting the payload’s equipment. The SNT consortium as well as Kominfo are actively involved in all these phases taking advantage from now from the operational flexibility offered by the fifth-generation digital processor embarked on SATRIA. The full Ka-band SATRIA satellite, to be positioned at 146°E, will carry more than 150 gigabits per second over the full Indonesian territory. Dedicated to narrow the digital divide, SATRIA has the ambition to connect around 145,000 areas including 90,000 schools, 40,000 hospitals and public buildings as well as regional government sites not linked by existing satellite or terrestrial infrastructure. The satellite will contribute to the digital infrastructure developments in Indonesia counting more than 17,500 islands.