MOSCOW. Oct 30 (Interfax-AVN) - The launch of the Russian-Ukrainian Zenit carrier rocket with the U.S. XM-4 radio satellite is scheduled for 2:49 a.m. Moscow time on Tuesday (2349 GMT on Monday), the Sea Launch corporation said it a posting on its official web-site.
It will be the second attempt to orbit the U.S. satellite. The original plan was to launch it overnight to October 27, but an automatic command to stop launch operations was issued one minute before the liftoff. All pre-launch operations are carried out in the automatic mode during the last hours before the lift-off, and people are evacuated from the floating platform.
The XM-4 satellite was manufactured by the Boeing company on an order from a U.S. telecommunications company. Equipment for the satellite was manufactured by France's Alcatel company. The apparatus has 170 digital channels and is to ensure radio transmission to an audience of seven million people. The estimated active service life of the satellite is 15 years. Its weight is 5,139 kg.
The Sea Launch corporation was formed in April 1995 by Boeing Commercial Space Company (Seattle, U.S.) with a 40% stake, the rocket and space corporation Energia (Korolyov, Russia) with a 25% stake, Kvaerner Maritime a.s. (Oslo, Norway) with a 20% stake, and the Yuzhnoye state design bureau and Yuzhmash production association (Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) with a 15% stake.
The Sea Launch system is used to lift 2-tonne spacecraft to geo-stationary orbits, 6-tonne satellites to transitional orbits, and 11-15-tonne vehicles to near earth orbits with inclination of 0-90 degrees.
The first demonstration launch of the Zenit-3SL carrier rocket from the Odyssey platform took place on March 27, 1999.