RUSSIA'S POLYOT Aerospace Association of Omsk, Siberia, has opened an office in Geneva, Switzerland, as part of a campaign to win custom for its low-cost Cosmos satellite launcher.
The Cosmos can carry 1,500kg payloads into low-Earth orbit (LEO) for $10-12 million.
Polyot is also seeking international partners to help finance further developments of the Cosmos rocket series, says company director Albert Shelenkov.
He claims that Cosmos launch costs are the cheapest on the market and that a significant number of boosters are "...ready and waiting, to provide the world's fastest response time".
The 34.2m-long two-stage liquid-propellant Cosmos booster is based on the SS-5 Skean missile, which was first flown in 1967.
There have been three variants of the booster - manufactured by Polyot, but designed by the Ukraine's NPO Yuzhnoye - not to be confused with a launcher of the same name, based on the SS-6 Sandal missile, which was first flown in 1962.
The Cosmos, a veteran of 403 flights to reach orbit, launched its first Western commercial payloads into LEO on 24 January (Flight International, 8-14 February). Sweden's Astrid and the USA's Faisat 1 were carried with the Polyot-built Tsikada navigation satellite for Russia's merchant navy.
The Cosmos has been used to launch eight military-communications satellites into 2,000km orbits and Polyot believes that this experience makes the Cosmos particularly suitable for future networks of spacecraft providing world wide hand-held-telephone mobile communications.
Source: Flight International