Sea Launch LLC said DirecTV Inc.‘s Spaceway F1 satellite is on its way to the company’s equatorial launch site location in preparation for a scheduled April 26 launch on board a Zenit-3SL rocket. The launch window opens for a half hour at 12:31:30 a.m. PDT. The Boeing-built Spaceway F1 will ultimately reside at 102.8? West. The satellite carries a flexible payload with a fully steerable downlink antenna that can be reconfigured on orbit to seamlessly address market conditions.

In other DirecTV launch news, the company said its DirecTV 8 satellite is being readied for a mid-May launch by International Launch Services on a Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite will be used to enhance DirecTV’s direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television programming. It will be located at 101? West and will take over service from an older satellite at that orbital location. The new spacecraft, built by Space Systems/Loral, will provide selectable medium- and high-power Ku-band broadcast services to DirecTV customers with a Ka-band payload that will be available to link DirecTV broadcast facilities as part of the company’s initiative to significantly expand its capacity to launch hundreds of local digital and high-definition services.