The Boeing-led international Sea Launch company has set 28 July as the launch date to loft its first Zenit 3SL booster since the failure of the booster and the loss of the ICO communications satellite last March."It's very important that we have a success", says Will Trafton, the company's president and general manager. "We would be in a very difficult situation if we were to fail in two tries."
The launch of the PanAmSat PAS 9 communications satellite will follow the failure on 12 March of a Zenit 3Sl to place the first ICO Global Communications satellite into geostationary orbit.
The failure was caused by the failure of a single line of code software that did not close a helium valve in the pneumatic system in the booster's second stage. This allowed helium gas to escape, lowering pressure and causing loss of velocity and the eventual shutdown of the engine and loss of the vehicle and payload.
Sea Launch is confident it has corrected the errant systems. A spokesman for the Sea Launch Russian partner, Energia confirms that developers "have taken any and all measures to preclude such an error in the future".
There have been three launches so far in the Sea Launch programme, including a successful demonstration flight in March 1999 and the orbiting of a DirectV communications satellite in October 1999, inaugurating the Sea Launch commercial service.
Sea Launch has despatched its two vessels on a 5,000km journey to an equatorial position at 154deg W in the Pacific Ocean to support the PAS 9 launch aboard the Zenit 3SL booster from its Odyssey platform.
Source: Flight Daily News
