Sea Launch Stranded
The explosion of the Zenit-3SL booster during a commercial satellite launch this week has caused limited damage to Sea Launch’s oceangoing platform, experts said Thursday. The repairs may take as much as six months, according to unofficial reports. The president of the Energia space rocket corporation said a new launch with a Zenit booster would be held in March.
Experts from Russia’s Energia as well as Ukraine’s Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, the companies which prepared the Zenit-3SL rocket for the launch, have called the damage at the Odyssey platform limited.
A source in the Energia corporation assured Kommersant Thursday that the Odyssey self-propelled platform would be able to return from the launch location in the Pacific Ocean to its home port in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles. Russian experts will examine the platform upon arrival, which will show how much time and money it will take to repair Odyssey.
Repairs may take at least six month, unofficial sources estimated. Nonetheless, Nikolay Sevastyanov, president and chief designer of Energia, assured on Thursday that Zenit’s failure would not affect Sea Launch’s plans. The next launch on the list will send the Thuraya D3 satellite into orbit in March as planned.
Meanwhile, American DirecTV Group, which planned to launch its telecommunications satellite with a Zenit-3SL, has asked the Khrunichev Center send its satellite with another launcher, Proton-M.
Energia said initial steps to identify the cause of the failure were being taken, and an independent investigation will be conducted.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 02, 2007
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