NEW YORK, April 28. /TASS/. Turkmenistan’s first telecommunications satellite, which SpaceX corporation launched on Monday from an Air Force base near Cape Canaveral, has successfully reached the designated orbit at 35,756 above the surface of the Earth.

TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSAT was built by the French-Italian company Thales Alenia Space. Its orbital position is that of 52 degrees east. It weighs about 4.5 tons and will have a service life of 15 years.

The satellite will cover Europe, a big number of Asian countries and Africa and will assure transmission of signals for TV programmes, radio broadcasting and the Internet. It was launched with the aid of SpaceX Falcon 9 booster vehicle.

At present, telecommunications in Turkmenistan are serviced by the Yamal satellite belonging to Gazprom Space System company.

In 2009, Turkmenistani President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow made public his decision to launch the first national telecom satellite. He expressed the conviction then that its presence would give a powerful boost to the development of telecom systems, the Internet and television in the country and will facilitate the implementation of an array of national programmes.

Thales Alenia Space began the R & D works in 2011. TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSAT is based on the platform of the Spacebus 4000 satellite aimed at transmitting high-definition signals.