Press-center
Press-center
SEA LAUNCH: THE THIRTY-SIXTH LAUNCH OF ZENIT-3SL ROCKET
On May 27, 2014, at 00 hours 09 minutes Kiev time, from Odysseus floating platform in the Pacific Ocean, in the area of Christmas Island (Republic of Kiribati) the Zenit-3SL launch vehicle with EutelSat-3B European spacecraft with the mass of 5967 kg was successfully launched.
The EutelSat-3B SC was developed by Astrium; its planned lifetime exceeds 15 years. The spacecraft was injected into geostationary orbit which is occupied by other EutelSat company spacecraft at the point of 3° east longitude.
The EutelSat-3B SC designed mainly for telecommunication and professional video applications will transmit data between South-East Asia and Africa and provide direct communication between Europe and Asian-Pacific region.
Shell Carlsen, the Sea Launch President, noted: “We welcome the trust and confidence that Eutelsat company has demonstrated and look forward to further cooperation which is based on successful spacecraft launches for this Customer in 2011 and 2012.”
Michelle de Rosaine, the EutelSat General Director, said before the launch: “We are glad to have another possibility of joint work with the Sea Launch specialists in the frameworks of coming EutelSat-3B SC launch – the mission which will be the third after the successful launches of EutelSat-7 West A SC in 2011 and EutelSat-70B SC in 2012. The contract that we signed allows increasing the flexibility of our resources which is required to expand our orbital group to six spacecraft by late 2015.”
This is the first launch in 2014 and the 36th launch under the Sea Launch program.
The pre-launch processing and launch were conducted by the specialists of Yuzhnoye SDO and SE PA Yuzhmashzavod as part of the international team.
The Zenit-3SL integrated launch vehicle was designed by Yuzhnoye State Design Office. The first and second stages were developed by Yuzhnoye SDO and manufactured by SE PA Yuzhmashzavod in cooperation with the Russian and Ukrainian companies. The third stage (DM-SL upper stage) was developed and manufactured by Energia Space Rocket Corporation (Russia).
For additional information and images of EutelSat-3B SC mission visit the Sea Launch site: www.sea-launch.com.
