Optus B1 suffered an outage on 30 March 2006 at 0652 UTC after a routine manoeuvre, affecting radio and television satellite services in Australia and New Zealand.
Optus maintained contact with the satellite throughout the outage. The satellite's pointing was recovered and services progressively restored between 2000 UTC and 2030 UTC.
Optus said it believes the most probable cause for the outage to be a fuel feed anomaly to one of the thrusters on the satellite.
Optus B1 lost its primary Satellite Control Processor (SCP) on 21 May 2005 and is operating on its backup SCP.
As a consequence of the SCP failure, the ageing satellite experienced a temporary outage. Satellite operator Optus said that television broadcast services had been quickly restored.
Pay television operator Sky Network Television Ltd. said it is reviewing with Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., options to provide additional backup in case the original backup processor also fails.
Optus plans to launch two new D1 and D2 satellites, with the first to be launched in 2006 and the second 18 months later. Being built by Orbital Sciences, the new spacecraft will replace the B series satellites.
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