UP F RONT
ROCKET SCIENCE
On 28 June, 2017 an Ariane 5 rocket
transported an Inmarsat satellite into
orbit above the Earth as a key part
of the EAN. Ariane 5 is an amazing
design, as these eight facts show…
• It is around five storeys high and
has a mass of 780 tons – equivalent
to roughly 390 adult male elephants
• Its payload is a maximum of 10
metric tons when heading to
geostationary transfer orbit. Cargo
only comprises about 1% of the
rocket’s total weight
• Each launch costs €150 million
• The Ariane 5 needed 1,340 tons
of thrust to lift off
• The rocket travelled at over
25,000mph – that’s seven miles
per second
• At 42 miles and 124 miles above the
Earth, respectively, Ariane 5’s solid
rocket boosters and then its main
Vulcain engine were jettisoned to
fall into the South Atlantic Ocean
• According to NASA engineers, the
acoustic energy produced at launch
could knock down a building
• Water jets are used to dampen
the sound wave of the launch by
increasing the resistance on it,
slowing down the sound wave
1. THE ARIANA 5
BLASTING OFF FROM
THE GUIANA SPACE
CENTRE IN FRENCH
GUIANA IN JUNE 2017
2. THE EAN CAN
SUPPORT STREAMING
IFE, EVEN IN
THE CONGESTED
EUROPEAN AIRSPACE
aircraftinteriorsinternational.com
016 SEPTEMBER 2019
2
EAN GOES ONLINE
The European Aviation Network (EAN) is now in its soft
launch phase, with almost two million passengers
having trialled the inflight broadband system
The European Aviation Network (EAN),
developed with the aim of being the
fastest inflight broadband service in
Europe, has entered the soft launch
phase, with initial airline customers
(primarily IAG carriers and Lufthansa)
giving more than 30,000 passengers each
day on more than 100 routes across the
continent a chance to try out the system.
EAN is claimed to be the first network
of its kind worldwide, combining highcapacity
satellite coverage with a 4G LTE
ground network to provide high-speed
(75Mbit/s downstream and 20Mbit/s
upstream per airplane, with a total
capacity of 50Gbps), uninterrupted
coverage and latency of less than 100ms
across all 28 European Union states, plus Norway and
Switzerland. The network is designed for high-traffic
flight paths, delivering sufficient capacity to support
streaming and other high-bandwidth requirements.
Europe is one of the world’s most congested aviation
regions, with more than one billion passengers and 11
million flights per year, and air traffic forecast to double
over the next decade, so the EAN is designed to grow
capacity to match demand. The system initially
combines Inmarsat’s multi-beam S-band satellite with
around 300 Deutsche Telekom ground towers, with
scalability enabled by multiplying bandwidth through
increasing the number and density of towers.
In addition to Inmarsat and Deutsche Telekom, EAN
development partners include European companies
such as Nokia, Thales, Cobham, Aeroantenna, Airbus,
Kontron, EAD Aerospace, PMV Engineering, STS Aeromod,
Lufthansa Technik, EAD Aerospace and Sasken,
The system is available for every aircraft type,
requiring them to be fitted them with terminals and
an ultra-lightweight, low-drag antenna to connect with
both the satellite and ground network – a system said
to have low installation and maintenance costs, and an
installation time of under nine hours per aircraft.
To date, almost two million passengers have travelled
on flights with access to the connectivity solution. Philip
Balaam, president of Inmarsat Aviation explained, “We
have been working with our initial airline customers to
monitor and fine-tune the service during their soft
launches before it’s rolled out on their wider fleets. We
are pleased with the initial response from both airlines
and passengers, which is testament to the role EAN is
already playing in the European aviation industry.”
Indeed Balaam states that EAN has established an
“unprecedented new benchmark” for inflight broadband,
not only in Europe but worldwide. The system will
continue to roll out on more aircraft over the coming
months and is also being made available to the business
aviation market.
See page 68 to read about another major IFEC advance: laser-enabled connectivity
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