They carried digital satellite television to the countries of Scandinavia, Baltic states, Eastern Europe and Africa, including the Viasat pay TV system, along with several pay TV packages for Eastern Europe, the TopTV package for Africa, a number of Ukrainian channels and the national Latvian and Lithuanian channel service free-to-air.
Sirius 2 was manufactured by Aérospatiale and launched from Kourou on 12 November 1997 to replace the Tele-X satellite.
It is of the model Spacebus 3000B2 and has 32 Ku-band transponders with beams targeting both the Nordic region and all of Europe.
The Astra 5A satellite mission ended on 16 January 2009 due to an abnormal condition with the spacecraft.
[5] Sirius 3 was leased to SES immediately after its launch on 5 October 1998 for a period of 12 months (after which it was moved to its original destination of 5.0° East) to provide capacity at 28.2° East and to back up Astra 2A, pending the launch of Astra 2B on 14 September 2000.