Sea Launch was a multinational—Norway, Russia, Ukraine, United States—spacecraft launch company founded in 1995 that provided orbital launch services from 1999 to 2014. The company used a mobile maritime launch platform for equatorial launches of commercial payloads on specialized Zenit-3SL rockets from a former mobile/floating oil drilling rig renamed Odyssey.
Zenit was a family of space launch vehicles designed by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in Dnipro, Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Zenit was originally built in the 1980s for two purposes: as a liquid rocket booster for the Energia rocket and, equipped with a second stage, as a stand-alone middle-weight launcher with a payload greater than the 7 tonnes of the Soyuz but smaller than the 20 tonnes payload of the Proton. The last rocket family developed in the USSR, the Zenit was intended as an eventual replacement for the dated Soyuz and Proton families, and it would employ propellants which were safer and less toxic than the Proton's nitrogen tetroxide/UDMH mix. Zenit was planned to take over crewed spaceship launches from Soyuz, but these plans were abandoned after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Angara rocket family is a family of launch vehicles being developed by the Moscow-based Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. The launch vehicles are to put between 3,800 kg (8,400 lb) and 24,500 kg (54,000 lb) into low Earth orbit and are intended, along with Soyuz-2 variants, to replace several existing launch vehicles.
The Dnepr rocket was a space launch vehicle named after the Dnieper River. It was a converted ICBM used for launching artificial satellites into orbit, operated by launch service provider ISC Kosmotras. The first launch, on April 21, 1999, successfully placed UoSAT-12, a 350 kg demonstration mini-satellite, into a 650 km circular Low Earth orbit.
The State Space Agency of Ukraine is the Ukrainian government agency responsible for space policy and programs. It was formed on 29 February 1992, and was based on the Soviet space program infrastructure that remained in Ukraine following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was called the National Space Agency of Ukraine until 9 December 2010.
MEASAT Satellite Systems Sdn. Bhd. is a Malaysian communications satellite operator that owns and operates the MEASAT and AFRICASAT spacecraft. The company provides satellite services to leading Malaysian broadcasters, Direct-To-Home (DTH) platforms, and telecom operators. With capacity across six communication satellites, the company provides satellite services to over 150 countries.
The Zenit-3SL was an expendable carrier rocket operated by Sea Launch. First flown in 1999, it was launched 36 times, with three failures and one partial failure. It was a member of the Zenit family of rockets, and is built by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau. RKK Energia produced the Block DM-SL upper stage, whilst the payload fairing was produced by Boeing. Launches were conducted from the Ocean Odyssey platform anchored on the equator in the Pacific Ocean, at a point with 154°W longitude, about 370 kilometres east of Kiritimati.
Blok D is an upper stage used on Soviet and later Russian expendable launch systems, including the N1, Proton-K and Zenit.
The Zenit-2M, Zenit-2SB, Zenit-2SLB or Zenit-2FG was a Ukrainian expendable carrier rocket derived from the Zenit-3SL. It was a member of the Zenit family of rockets, which were designed by the Yuzhmash.
Land Launch refers to a service product of Sea Launch SA. There is no entity or company called Land Launch. Sea Launch created the Land Launch offering to address lighter satellites directly into geosynchronous orbit or into geosynchronous transfer orbit, while Sea Launch continues to address the heavy satellite launch market.
MEASAT-3 was a Malaysian communications satellite which was successfully launched on 11 December 2006 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Site 45 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome used to be a Zenit rocket launch site consisting of two pads, both of which are currently inactive. It used to be the launch site for all Soviet and Russian government Zenit launches, along with a commercial launch conducted for Globalstar in 1998, and continuing commercial launches under the Land Launch programme. The main pad at the site is area 45/1, which was completed in 1983 following five years of construction. A second pad, area 45/2, was completed in 1990, but was destroyed by a launch failure in the same year.
The Proton-K, also designated Proton 8K82K after its GRAU index or SL-12 after its model number, was a Russian, previously Soviet, carrier rocket derived from the earlier Proton. It was built by Khrunichev, and launched from sites 81/23, 81/24, 200/39 and 200/40 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The Zenit 3SLB or Zenit-3M was a Ukrainian expendable carrier rocket derived from the Zenit-2SB. It was a member of the Zenit family of rockets, which were designed by the Yuzhnoye Design Office. Produced at Yuzhmash, the rocket was a modified version of the Zenit-3SL, designed to be launched from a conventional launch pad rather than the Sea Launch Ocean Odyssey platform. Most of components of the rocket were produced in Russia. The Ukrainian space industry was highly integrated with that of Russia due to its Soviet heritage, but that cooperation was interrupted by the Russo-Ukrainian War beginning in 2014, which effectively led to a hiatus in the Zenit program. The subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw damage to its manufacturing facilities due to Russian missile strikes, and what survived those strikes pivoted to producing military weapons.
The Zenit-3F, Zenit-3SLBF or Zenit-2SB/Fregat was an expendable carrier rocket. It was a member of the Zenit family of rockets, which were designed by Yuzhnoye Design Bureau of Ukraine.
Intelsat 15, also known as IS-15, is a communications satellite owned by Intelsat. Intelsat 15 was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, on a Star-2.4. It is located at 85° E longitude on the geostationary orbit. It was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome to a geosynchronous transfer orbit on 30 November 2009 by a Zenit-3SLB launch vehicle. It has 22 active Ku band transponders, plus eight spares. Five of those transponders are owned and operated by SKY Perfect JSAT Group under the name JCSAT-85.
Elektro–L is a series of meteorological satellites developed for the Russian Federal Space Agency by NPO Lavochkin. The first satellite, Elektro-L No.1, was launched on 2 January 2011. It is the first Russian weather satellite that successfully operates in geostationary orbit, and is currently the second operational Russian weather satellite. The satellites have a mass of about 1620 kg and are designed to operate for 10 years each. They are capable of producing images of the Earth's whole hemisphere in both visible and infrared frequencies, providing data for climate change and ocean monitoring in addition to their primary weather forecasting role.
Kosmos 104 or Zenit-2 No.33 was a Soviet first-generation low-resolution optical film–return reconnaissance satellite launched in 1966. A Zenit-2 spacecraft, Kosmos 104 was the thirty-second of eighty-one such satellites to be launched and had a mass of 4,730 kilograms (10,430 lb).
MEASAT-3b is a communications satellite which MEASAT Satellite Systems operates in geosynchronous orbit at 91.5 degrees east longitude, co-located with MEASAT-3 and MEASAT-3a, with orbital period of 1436.1 minutes and orbital speed of ~3.08 km/s. It was built by Astrium, based on the Eurostar spacecraft platform, with an investment of approximately MYR1.25bn ($370m), and the 5th MEASAT satellite in orbit. Its weigh 5,897 kilograms at liftoff and is 6.6 by 2.8 by 2.3 meters in dimensions in its stowed config and spanned across 39.4m in orbit. It is three-axis stabilized and has 48 Ku band transponder, more than double the current Ku-band capacity operated by MEASAT, which are used for the expansion of video and data services and enhances support to Asia's premium direct-to-home (DTH) and video distribution neighbourhood across Malaysia, South Asia (India), Indonesia and Australia, serving more than 18 million households. It has been designed to support a fourth market. Australian satellite operator NewSat Ltd. announced in February 2012, that an undisclosed number of Ku-band transponders will be leases and marketed as Jabiru 2. Its mission duration lasted more than 15 years. MEASAT-3b technical frequency EIRP test are available in LyngSat website.
Irtysh, also named Soyuz-5, formerly codenamed Fenix in Russian and Sunkar in Kazakh, is a planned Russian rocket that is being developed by RKTs Progress within the "Project Feniks". Initially it will replace the capability of Zenit-2 and Proton Medium, and in the future will serve as the base of a super heavy-lift launch vehicle rocket (Yenisei) to match the Energia/Buran capabilities. As of August 2023, Irtysh is expected to launch from the Baikonur Baiterek, the ex Zenit-2 launch site, in a partnership with the government of Kazakhstan, with a planned debut in December 2025.
