The London listed communication company, Inmarsat completed its decade-long investment of $1.5bn, when it launched a new satellite in the space today, which is as big as a double-decker and weighs six tonnes.

This satellite has been named the Inmarsat-4 satellite and has a solar panel wingspan equal to the length of a football pitch. The Russian made Proton Breeze M rocket from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carried it into the orbit.

The satellite is expected to complete a global communications network for the company when it will move its position above the Pacific Ocean over the nest few weeks. Already there are two other Inmarsat-4 satellites in the orbit.

The launch of the satellite was a combined success for Inmarsat as well as the Proton rocket at the Khrunichev plant in Moscow. Earlier the last rocket sent to orbit was in 1960s but it ended in disaster as it landed at a wrong altitude and deployed a US communication’s satellite.

However, Andrew Sukawaty didn’t seem to be concerned at being next in the launch queue.

He said, “It is true that the last satellite they launched before this one was a failure but you can take that one of two ways: if you look at the history of the satellite launch business, usually the return to flight — the next one after a failure — has a very high success rate because they double check and triple check everything. We even had other satellite operators calling us and wanting to buy our slot.”

The exact time of blasting of the rocket was at 11:43pm last night, which in local time is 4:43am, and just after nine hours, the satellite separated from the large stage of the rocket. It will take another four weeks for the satellite to slot into its geosynchronous orbit. The satellite battery is all set to be charge by its first of the five solar panels and over the next few weeks, rest will also follow.

The new satellite, which can provide broadband at up to 500Kb per second is 60 times as powerful as the whole fleet of its predecessors.