The Sea Launch consortium will launch on Friday a Zenit-2SL carrier rocket from its floating platform Odyssey to put the U.S. Intelsat 19 telecoms satellite into orbit, a spokesman for Russian space corporation Energia said.
“The launch is scheduled for 09.23 a.m. Moscow time [05:23 GMT],” the spokesman said. “The separation of the Intelsat 19 satellite from the DM-SL booster is expected at 10.23 a.m. Moscow time [06:23 GMT].”
Intelsat 19 is a geostationary communications satellite built by Space Systems Loral.
The satellite carries 46 C-band and 34 Ku-band transponders to provide telecoms services to high-growth markets around the Pacific Rim, including Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and U.S. West Coast.
The Sea Launch system offers the most direct and cost-effective route to geostationary orbit for commercial communications satellites, providing diversity of supply, affordability and flexibility for the industry’s satellite operators.
It uses reliable Ukrainian-built Zenit-3SL carrier rockets with Russian DM boosters to deliver satellites into orbit.
Sea Launch AG was formed in 1995 as a consortium of four companies from Norway, Russia, Ukraine and the United States, and managed by U.S. Boeing. It resumed operations last year after a 30-month hiatus that saw passage through U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy, change of ownership from Boeing to Energia and a move from California to Switzerland.
The company has conducted over 30 launches so far. Two of them resulted in failure and one was abortive.