Ownership of the three Marisat satellites was transferred to Lockheed Martin when it bought COMSAT Corp in 2000.
The Marisat-F2 satellite was acquired by Intelsat as part of the COMSAT General Corp. acquisition in October 2004.
The satellites were launched from Cape Canaveral by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under contract with COMSAT.
This left the U.S. Navy with a potential "gap" in UHF coverage for several years until the first FLTSATCOM satellite would be available in December 1978.
Marisat F3 (NSSDC ID: 1976-101A[7]) was operated at 72.5° E until it was retired in the late 1990s and moved out to a disposal orbit.
It was relocated to 326.1 E (33.9º W), over the Atlantic Ocean, and since 1999 F2 had been providing a wide-band data link for the National Science Foundation's U.S. Antarctic Program's Amundsen-Scott research station at the South Pole.