HUGHES SPACE AND COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY
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NAVY'S UHF F8 SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED

CAPE CANAVERAL AIR STATION, Fla., March 16, 1998 -- The Navy's eighth Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Follow-On satellite, UHF F8, built by Hughes Space and Communications Company, was successfully launched today.

Liftoff was at 4:32 p.m. EST March 16 (1:32 p.m. in PST, 9:32 p.m. GMT) from Cape Canaveral onboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas II rocket. About 30 minutes after liftoff, UHF F8 was injected into an elliptical transfer orbit. About 5:07 p.m. EST, March 16, satellite controllers received signals from UHF F8, indicating systems are operating normally.

UHF F8 is the eighth in the series to be built by Hughes and has a 10-year service life. The satellite is an HS 601 model, with a revolutionary new Global Broadcast Service (GBS) payload aboard, and four 130-watt, 24 Mbps military Ka-band transponders that will transmit to small, mobile, tactical terminals from its geostationary position of 172 degrees East longitude over the Pacific Ocean. UHF F8 is the first of three UHF Follow-On spacecraft to carry the GBS capability, implemented in just two years after the Navy ordered it in 1996. The F8, F9 and F10 satellites will continue to carry the baseline narrowband UHF and protected EHF payloads, as well as wideband GBS services.

With GBS, the new satellite will be able to transmit high-speed, wideband, simplex broadcast signals to the warfighter. With the launch of F10, the Navy will have near-global GBS coverage. The GBS payload has three GBS steerable downlink spot beam antennas, in addition to one steerable and one fixed GBS uplink antenna. This antenna modification results in a 96 Mbps capability.

UHF F8 is the second launch of the year for Hughes, and it is the 40th HS 601 spacecraft to be launched.

A unit of Hughes Electronics Corporation, Hughes Space and Communications Company is the world's leading manufacturer of geostationary commercial communications satellites and is also a major supplier of spacecraft and scientific instruments to the U.S. government, and builder of weather satellites for the United States and Japan. The earnings of Hughes Electronics are used to calculate the earnings per share attributable to GMH (NYSE symbol) common stock.

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