Tim Furniss/LONDON
ILS INTERNATIONAL Launch Services has demonstrated its satellite and orbital delivery service by launching, in two days, the Inmarsat 3F2 and GE 1 communications satellites on Proton and Atlas boosters from Baikonur in Kazakhstan and Cape Canaveral in Florida, respectively.
The consortium linking Lockheed Martin and Russia's Khrunichev and Energia completed the second Russian commercial, geostationary-orbit launch, on 6 September, when the Proton carried the Lockheed Martin Astro Space-Matra Marconi Space Inmarsat into space.
The Inmarsat 3F2, the second of a series of five planned spacecraft, will be placed on station over the Atlantic Ocean East region, extending land, maritime and aeronautical mobile services across 80% of the world's landmass to users with terminals down to laptop-computer size.
An Atlas 2A model was used to launch the GE Americom satellite, also built by Lockheed Martin Astro Space. The GE 1 is the first of a new-generation, high-powered spacecraft bus, the A2100. It provides US domestic cable television and radio, and business- and government-communications services, equipped with 24 C-band and 24-Ku band transponders.
Another Lockheed Martin Astro Space satellite, a Series 7000 bus called the Echostar 2, was launched on the V91/Ariane 42P from Kourou, French Guiana, on 11 September.
The craft was originally scheduled for lift-off by a Chinese Long March, but was one of several to be switched to other launchers, after the catastrophic 22s flight of the first Long March 3B in February.
On 10 September, China Great Wall Industry released its findings on the accident. The vehicle went off course immediately after lift-off, when the inertial-guidance platform was misaligned by a loss of voltage in a servo-loop. This was probably caused, by the loosening of three gold-aluminium joints, at lift-off. No anomalies were detected before lift-off.
Source: Flight International
