According to its operator, Space Communications Corporation, the deployment of Superbird 7 (to be called Superbird-C2 after launch) marks the first time a satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

 operator in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 has used a commercial satellite that was made in Japan. Superbird-C2 was manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation based on the DS2000 satellite bus

Satellite bus

A satellite bus or spacecraft bus is the general model on which multiple-production satellite spacecraft are often based. The bus is the infrastructure of a spacecraft, usually providing locations for the payload .They are most commonly used for geosynchronous satellites, particularly...

.

Superbird 7 was launched August 14, 2008 by an Ariane 5

Ariane 5

Ariane 5 is, as a part of Ariane rocket family, an expendable launch system used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit or low Earth orbit . Ariane 5 rockets are manufactured under the authority of the European Space Agency and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales...

 carrier rocket. It has a mass of 5 tonnes (11,023.1 lb) at launch and a design life of more than 15 years.

DS-2000 satellite bus

Other satellites with the DS-2000 bus are the DRTS Kodama data relay satellite, MTSAT-2 for weather observations and the ETS-VIII

ETS-VIII

JAXA Engineering Test Satellite ETS-VIII is the eighth technology test satellite in a series which started with ETS-1 in 1975 by NASDA. It was launched with the H-2A on December 18, 2006....

 experimental communication satellite.