Tim Furniss
The European Space Agency (ESA) has formally contracted Starsem to launch the Mars Express spacecraft in June 2003 aboard a Soyuz booster from Baikonur.
Starsem is a consortium operated by Russian company, Samara, which manufactures the Soyuz, the Russian Space Agency and Europe's Arianespace and Aerospatiale.
The Soyuz launcher for the Mars Express mission will use a Fregat upper stage, formerly used as an upper stage on Proton boosters for flight of two Mars craft in 1988.
The Fregat is also being used on two of the six other contracted launches. Two Soyuz-Fregat boosters will launch two Cluster science satellites each in May and August 2000.
Mobile
Starsem also has three launches to conduct this year for Globalstar, to launch four mobile communications satellites each, to establish a fully operational constellation in low Earth orbit.
It has already successfully launched three quartets of Globalstars.
Starsem is a success story of European-Russian cooperation but its future depends considerably on the need to launch satellites for the many proposed mobile and multimedia low Earth orbit satellite constellations.
Not all these projects are certain, however, especially after the doubts expressed about the technical viability of constellation systems after the experience of Motorola's Iridium system.
Source: Flight Daily News
