PT Indosat Tbk awarded a contract to Thales Alenia Space to build and launch the Palapa-D communications satellite, Thales announced June 29.

Palapa-D, scheduled to be placed in orbit in 2009, will replace Palapa-C2  at 113º West and offer more capacity than its predecessor with 24 standard C-band, 11 extended C-Band and five Ku-band transponders covering Asia, the Middle East and Australia.

The contract is valued between $200 million to $300 million.