The successful return to flight of the Proton Breeze-M rocket carrying Intelsat’s IS-23 satellite on 14 October was met with much relief from the satellite community. The quick turnaround means that the threat of a bottleneck in launches has been…
The successful return to flight of the Proton Breeze-M rocket carrying Intelsat’s IS-23 satellite on 14 October was met with much relief from the satellite community. The quick turnaround means that the threat of a bottleneck in launches has been abated with International Launch Services slated to carry out at four further missions by the end of the year.
Following the failure of the Federal launch carrying RSCC’s Express-MD2 and Telkom Indonesia Telkom-3 satellite on 7 August, all Proton launches were temporarily downed until completion of a Failure Review Oversight Board investigation.
The FROB subsequently came to the conclusion that the rocket’s pressurisation system was not up to specifications. As such, it recommended a corrective action plan for all Breeze M upper stages and the Proton was given the green light to fly again.
For satellite insurers, the return to flight was certainly welcome news, as any successful flight is. However, underwriters are still wary given the previous problems the rocket has had, despite its large number of successful launches. The Intelsat-23 launch represented ILS’ 75th Proton launch.
One source said: “There is still quite a long way to go before the market’s confidence in that vehicle is restored. We have seen this pattern before, the FROB quickly discovering the reason behind the failure followed by a successful return to flight only for another failure further down the line. So we remain cautious.”
