1:10 scale model of Hylas-1 satellite

HYLAS-1 (Highly Adaptable Satellite) is a British communications satellite in geostationary orbit. It was made by EADS Astrium (now Airbus Defence and Space) for the UK telecommunications company Avanti Communications and launched in 2010. It provides High Definition Television (at the time a new service) and broadband Internet access. It helped address the issue of poor broadband coverage in many parts of Europe which have less developed ground infrastructure. It represents both UK and European engineering as well as international cooperation with ISRO, showing their significant space capabilities and growing influence.

Geostationary orbit (GEO) is a stable orbit in which objects orbit at the same speed as the Earth's rotation. This makes satellites appear to be stationary. This orbit is mostly used by satellites that need to stay constantly above one particular place over Earth, for example telecommunication satellites. This way an antenna on Earth can be in a fixed position, pointing directly at the satellite. Weather monitoring satellites also often use this orbit because they can continually observe specific areas to see how weather trends emerge there. Three satellites equally spaced in GEO can provide nearly global coverage because of their high altitude (35,786km).

The satellite covers areas of the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Eastern Europe via eight regional spot beams. Unlike typical satellites which cover the whole of a continent, the spot beams focus on smaller areas. This means the same frequencies can be re-used in different beams, increasing the overall bandwidth of the satellite. The satellite is based on the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) I-2K small satellite platform. ISRO's commercial arm (Antrix) built the bus and Astrium built the electronics payload.