[6] It will offer a wide range of telecommunications, data transmission, telephone and television services mainly across all of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay including direct broadcast TV in the ISDB-S standard.

[7][8] The ARSAT-1 is the first flight model of the ARSAT-3K satellite bus developed by INVAP for ARSAT S.A.[9] It is a small (around 3 t (3.3 tons) at launch) platform with a 350 kg (770 lb) maximum payload mass and 3.5 kW of payload power consumption at the satellite end of life.

It uses an integrated chemical propulsion system supplied by EADS Astrium for both orbit raising and station keeping.

[14] On September 8, 2010, Honeywell announces that it had received a $2.4 million order to supply the reaction wheels and the MIMU for the satellite.

It was an innovative policy which included two satellites and covered the whole expected life, instead of the usual launch plus first year of operations.

[23] On September 22, it finished the Launch System Electric Performance Test and was ready for integration with the Ariane-5 launcher.

[28] Two days later, on October 18, it performed the first of five orbital maneuvers using its 400 N (90 lbf) LAE to increase the perigee to 4,654 km (2,892 mi) and reduced the inclination to 3.5°.

[29][30] On October 20 it performed the second orbital maneuver increasing its perigee to 14,050 km (8,730 mi) while reducing the inclination to 1.52°.

It included testing of all subsystems, such as avionics, thermal management, power supply system and payload.

This constituted the last technical hurdle to test since it stressed to the maximum requirement the battery and thermal management subsystems.

[37] On May 20, 2015, ARSAT S.A. announced that thanks to the high efficiency of the orbital maneuvers, the expected service life of ARSAT-1 was extended to 18 years.