Boeing

DIRECTV-4S, which was successfully launched on November 26, is the 200th satellite designed, built and delivered by Boeing Satellite Systems, the world's leading satellite manufacturer. Forty customers in 18 countries have purchased Hughes- and Boeing-built satellites, and the company has attained numerous firsts in a string of achievements. These included being first to market with such breakthroughs as multi-junction gallium arsenide solar cells and ion propulsion as well as large-scale digital signal processors with more power than thousands of earth-bound computers.