International Launch Services has successfully completed its return to flight with the launch of the Satmex-8 satellite on a Proton rocket on 27 March 2013.
The mission, which was originally slated for year end 2012, was the launch service provider’s…
International Launch Services has successfully completed its return to flight with the launch of the Satmex-8 satellite on a Proton rocket on 27 March 2013.
The mission, which was originally slated for year end 2012, was the launch service provider’s first flight since the failed launch of Gazprom Space Systems’ Yamal-402 on 8 December 2012. The success now paves the way for a hectic schedule of launches by ILS, with one commercial launch per month from April to August and more than ten launches for the Proton by the end of the year.
Speaking at a press briefing in Washington prior to the launch, ILS president Phil Slack explained how the company was looking to bounce back after last year’s failure: “2012 was a challenging year, there’s no doubt about it. Certainly there are customers that have had concerns. I think we have addressed all of those concerns. We feel that the investigation that was conducted by Khrunichev and Roscosmos did a good job in identifying the root cause of the last failure and implementing corrective actions.
“We then conducted the largest FROB we have ever conducted. We had extensive participation, with three industry experts, three insurance underwriters and fifteen customers. We felt that given where we were it was a good idea to have significant involvement from the whole customer community to build confidence back.
“In the end I think we have got all the customers satisfied, we have briefed the insurance communities and we’ve answered the questions that they have had. So I think that customer confidence is returning, obviously we need to have a string of successes to really win back full customer confidence, but we are certain we will be able to do that and get Proton to be a trusted major force in heavy lifting.”
As to what actions ILS’ Russian parent Khrunichev is going to take to improve the rocket’s reliability, Slack said: “There are a number of quality measures that are being implemented by Khrunichev. There was a review across the whole vehicle determining what should be reclassified as critical items.
“In each of the rocket’s manufacturing branches, Khrunichev has gone in – or is going in – and doing a very comprehensive quality management system audit.
“And the third major theme, and the thing we think will really bare fruit for the future, is a Breeze-M reliability improvement study. Khrunichev will be looking at the whole Breeze-M on a subsystem by subsystem basis, identifying any areas of concern or weak areas that could be improved, to try and get the demonstrated reliability up to where the theoretical reliability is. That study will probably take a year or so to complete.”
While this progresses, ILS is bullish on its future commercial prospects. Slack said: “We think there are certainly opportunities for new orders. We are working with a number of customers and hope that in the not too distant future we’ll have some announcements. There are some customers that are willing to commit earlier and some that will want to wait and see a long string of successes. But we think that it will be a fairly normal year for us with regards to orders.”
“Conservatively we think we can get five to six orders this year, we’d obviously like more.”
As to whether ILS’ current market position has affected its pricing, Slack replied: “You are not going to win any business if you don’t respond to market pressures, and clearly when people have to potentially pay higher insurance rates, or there is a perception of higher risk, that certainly affects pricing. We have always been responsive to market pressures and we think that once we have a string of successes then there will be a separate set of pressure than there are today.”
