Intelsat Ltd. said Nov. 10 in its third quarter financial report that, based on failure review board analysis (FRB), the most likely cause of the of the total failure of IS-804 on Jan. 14 was “an electro-static discharge event in the battery circuitry that propagated to cause the sudden failure of the high voltage power system.”

Intelsat previously linked the IS-804 failure to a design issue with the Lockheed Martin Series 7000 bus on which it is based (SN, Aug. 15). There are eight active 7000 series satellites in orbit, including three in Intelsat’s fleet (IS-801, IS-802, and IS-804), two in New Skies Satellites Ltd.‘s fleet (NSS-5 and NSS-806), two in Echostar Communications Corp.‘s fleet (Echostar-1 and Echostar-2) and Asiasat-2 in Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd.‘s fleet.

Intelsat said, “This risk exists for our other LM 7000 series satellites” but maintained that the risk is low. “We don not currently believe that any operational steps or adjustments to our satellite deployment plan are required to mitigate the risk.”

New Skies in its Nov. 9 quarterly financial report also acknowledged the risk to the satellite, but echoed Intelsat’s statement that “the risk to any individual satellite is low.”

Intelsat said the failure review board is expected to release its findings in the fourth quarter.