ILS has made a second launch contract announcement within a week as it speedily works through its mission backlog following March’s return to flight.
Fresh from placing a bird for France’s Eutelsat yesterday, the Russian launch provider said it has…
ILS has made a second launch contract announcement within a week as it speedily works through its mission backlog following March’s return to flight.
Fresh from placing a bird for France’s Eutelsat yesterday, the Russian launch provider said it has been picked by the operator for another mission in the 2014-2016 timeframe. That satellite will be the seventh it has launched for Eutelsat during a partnership that goes back 13 years.
In a separate contract earlier this week, US-based Echostar announced it had picked ILS to loft one of its satellites in late 2015 or early 2016 – representing their sixth joint mission.
Since 1965, ILS’ heavy-lift Proton vehicle has launched a total 386 times, with its latest flight successfully orbiting the Eutelsat 3D spacecraft on 15 May.
But a failure in December to correctly place a satellite for Russia’s Gazprom Space Systems risked disrupting future launches slated for 2013, as all Protons were downed while an investigation into the incident got underway.
That investigation concluded in February, when it blamed a damaged bearing on the oxidizer side of a turbo pump for the failure, paving the way for a symbolic return to flight with Mexico’s Satmex-8 on 27 March.
ILS launched the Anik G1 satellite for Canada’s Telesat only a couple of weeks later on 15 April, which also happened to be the 20th anniversary of the formation of its commercial Proton business.
The next launch will be for the SES-6 satellite in early June, as it plans to conduct one commercial mission per month until August, with an additional 1-2 slated for Q4. There are also 3-5 federal Proton missions planned for this year.
A spokeswoman said ILS is able to conduct overlapping launch campaigns, and accommodate spacecraft as they come out of the factory, thanks largely to the Second Spacecraft Processing Facility (SSPF) it has been using since 2011.
“The SSPF reduces spans between commercial launches from 34-38 days to 18-22 days,” she explained.
“As well, the Proton system can launch missions regularly on 15-day centres with multiple pads.”
Proton has launched an average of ten times per year over the last six years, which ILS claims is the highest launch rate among heavy-lift launchers.
