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Astra 2D is one of a group of satellites operated by SES Astra, located at 28.2° East in the Clarke Belt. It is a Hughes HS-376 craft, and was launched from the Guiana Space Centre in December 2000.
Most of the transponders are used to provide television channels available on the Sky Digital satellite service to the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland and the non-subscription service, Freesat. Although the satellite's beam is tightly focused on the United Kingdom and Ireland, surrounding countries have the ability to pick the signal up (dependent on suitably sized satellite dishes). However some channels on 2D are encrypted with Videoguard (a proprietary encryption method by the NDS Group) and only Sky Digiboxes with valid cards, or standard hardware with non-approved (with respect to the Sky/NDS end-user contract) "Dragon", or "T-Rex" Conditional Access Modules can decode these channels.
The BBC broadcasts all of its domestic television channels (including BBC HD and the regional variations) from the Astra 2D satellite, except the BBC News Channel and BBC Parliament. All domestic BBC channels have been Free to Air since 29th July 2003.
ITV also broadcasts all its television channels (including regional variations of ITV1, as well as STV and UTV) from the Astra 2D satellite. All ITV channels have been Free to Air from 1st November 2005. The ITV HD channel is broadcasting from Eurobird 1.[1]
Channel 4 also broadcasts all of its channels free-to-air from this satellite (Exept Channel 4HD). These are Channel 4, Channel 4+1, E4, More4 and Film4 along with their timeshift variants from this satellite, all unencrypted.
From november 2008, Five began to transmit free-to-air for the first time on Astra 2D. They use borrowed space on one of the BBC transponders - allowing them to join freesat.
Although primarily a television broadcast satellite, other services such as satellite internet can be carried.
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