Olympus-1

Olympus-1 was a large European communications satellite, built for the European Space Agency and launched on 12 July 1989. Its builders were an industrial consortium that included British Aerospace and Matra Marconi Space, today's Astrium side, together with Alcatel Espace, Alenia Spazio, Fokker and SPAR Aerospace. When it flew it was the largest civilian telecommunications satellite ever built, and it was sometimes called LargeSat or L-Sat. Its career ended badly: the satellite lost the ability to articulate its solar arrays, then lost an on-board gyroscope during the Perseids meteor shower, and efforts to stabilise it used up most of its fuel. It was moved to a disposal orbit and went out of service on 11 and 12 August 1993. Its platform lived on as the Alphabus design, made by the same manufacturers for Inmarsat.