Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
As one Californian aerospace company rises to fame in the spaceflight world, another one that is home based (at least on the hardware side) in California is sailing into a turbulent and very uncertain future right now.
Yes, an old name that has not been seen for almost 1.5 years in the space transportation world has revived again, only to find that the world has already changed dramatically since their last launch in February 2013 - and the changes are against their survivals, not unless something changes on their side or the tidings suddenly changes.
Since their last launch in February 2013 veered off course within seconds and the rocket crashed into the sea, Sea Launch is in a vulnerable position to survive in the commercial launch market, and even more so since they were only on their 5th launch after reviving from bankruptcy in 2011 when they received yet another death blow from the Zenit-3SL rocket. And at that time they have no more confirmed launch mission on the manifest.
Many things have since changed then. One-Californian-aerospace-company-which-must-not-be-named, in hunger for every launch market they could find, finally launched not one but two geostationary comsats around last Christmas, and continues their fierce swoop on launch contracts everywhere, sweeping away much of the space Sea Launch survives on.
Meanwhile Sea Launch, now a company mainly lead by the Russian aerospace giant RSC Energia, was asked by the Russian government if they could do federal launch missions for them.....if they move away from their home port at Long Beach. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, now famous for his words of the trampoline, said this February that the Russian government is looking if it is possible to buy out the Sea Launch company to gain another way of launching federal payloads other than the notorious Proton. If this happens then the home port will most probably move to a port in the Russian Far East (Vladivostok?) and Sea Launch will be given a lifeline, but as of right now nothing has happened yet.
And of course since then, the production of Zenit rockets is now in threat as Ukraine fell into political storms. While the city of Dnipropetrovsk, well into the "pro-Russian" side of the country, is still relatively unaffected right now, who knows what happen as the tide shifts. And the recent tug-of-war between Russia and the US is definitely not helping things other, as well as former main partner Boeing still trying to sue for the $350 million losses in court.
This leaves Sea Launch with a very uncertain and maybe rather dim future. And with only 2 launches added to the manifest since the accident (and one of them is a Energia "rocket+satellites" package deal in 2016 with companies from Angola and Russia, hardly a sure thing), one may say Sea Launch is standing at the crossroads of the cosmos right now, and maybe only steps away from a grim death without another miracle happening like last time.
But.....maybe this is the time for a miracle to come. After 15 months without a launch (well....at least the latest Captain America film features the iconic Sea Launch Odyssey launch platform and the Sea Launch Commander ship...... :rofl
, a 1+ month of delay due to abnormal movement of the cable-mast while installing the rocket onto the launch pad that caused mechanical damage to the lateral plate housing located on the inter-stage truss of the rocket, and even a move of their "mail-box" headquarters inside Switzerland (from Bern to Nyon on the Lake Geneva coast), the 36th launch mission for them since 1999 has reached the final hours today. The daring customer is the European satellite communication giant Eutelsat, who is trusting Sea Launch to deliver the big Eutelsat 3B satellite into geostationary orbit. The 6 tonne satellite, as its name shows, will be positioned at 3 degrees East to service customers from Europe to the Middle East, Central Asia and even Brazil.Now, let's hope it goes right this time......
Launch location:
Odyssey Launch Platform, located at 0°N, 154°W
Launch dates and times:
Time Zone |
Local / UTC-10
|
Universal / UTC
|
Los Angeles / PDT
|
Moscow / UTC+4/
Launch time (Primary):
|
11:10:00
|
14:10:00
|
21:10:00
|
01:10:00
on:
|
May 26, 2014
|
May 26, 2014
|
May 26, 2014
|
May 27, 2014
{colsp=5}
[highlight][eventTimer]2014-05-26 21:10:00?before|after;%dd% Days %hh% Hours %mm% Minutes %ss% Seconds %c%[/eventTimer] Eutelsat 3B Launch[/highlight]
Live Coverage Of The Launch:
- Sea Launch Video Streams: http://www.sea-launch.com/missions/11385 - coverage will begin at 20:55 UTC / 13:55 PDT
PAYLOAD
Eutelsat 3B communication satellite:
Spacecraft Overview
Eutelsat selected EADS Astrium in July 2011 to build the Eutelsat 3B communications satellite to provide video, data, Internet and telecom services across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of South America, notably Brazil. The satellite will operate from Eutelsat 3°E location in geostationary orbit.
Based on Astrium’s Eurostar-3000 platform, Eutelsat 3B will operate 51 transponders in C, Ku and Ka-bands. Its ten antennas will enable Eutelsat 3B to provide fixed widebeams and steerable spotbeams to regional and national markets with a scalable allocation of power and spectrum per beam in Ka-band.
Scheduled for launch in early 2014, Eutelsat 3B will have a launch mass of six tonnes, an electrical power of 12 kW and is designed to deliver more than 15 years of in-orbit operation.
Parameter | Value
Working Orbit:
|
GEO
Orbital Location:
|
3° East
Coverage:
|
Europe, Central Asia, Middle East, North Africa, Brazil
ApA at separation:
|
35636 km
PeA at separation:
|
385 km
Inc at separation:
|
0°Eutelsat 3B
Customer:
|- Eutelsat
Prime contractor:
|- Airbus Defence and Space
Platform:
|- Eurostar-3000
Mass at Separation:
|- 5967 kg
Dry Mass:
|- ?
Stabilization:
|- 3 axis stabilized
Dimensions:
|- 7.5 m height, 31 m length after solar arrays deployment
Power at end-of-life:
|- 12 kW
Primary Payload:
|- 51 C-, Ku- and Ka-band transponders
Coverage area:
|
|
|
|
Life time:
|- 15+ years
|
Launch Vehicle:
Zenit-3SL / Blok DM-SL
Prime contractor:
|- Yuzhmash (A.M. Makarov Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant) - Ukraine
GRAU Index:
|- 11K77
Height:
| 58.7 m with upper stage and payload fairing Diameter:
| max 4.1 mLiftoff mass:
| 473 metric tonnes Payload mass:
| ~6 tonnes at GTO1st stage:
|- 1 X RD-171 engine
- Empty 33.9 tonnes
- Propellants 318.8 tonnes (RG-1 Kerosene and LOX)
- Thrust in vacuum 7 908 kN
- Thrust at sea level 7 259 kN
2nd stage:
|- 1 X RD-120 engine + 1 X RD-8 vernier engine
- Empty 9.3 tonnes
- Propellants 80.6 tonnes (RG-1 Kerosene and LOX)
- Thrust in vacuum 834 + 78 kN
Upper Stage:
|
- GRAU Index: - 11S861
- Common Name: Block DM-SL
- Designer: Designer: RKK Energia
- Manufacturer: "Krasmash" Krasnoyarsk Machine Building Plant
- Dimensions: Length 5.5 m, Diameter 4.1 m
- Empty Mass: 2.2 tonnes
- Propellants load: 15.095 tonnes (RP-1/LOX)
- Main Engine: 1 X RD-58M
- Thrust in vacuum 8.67 tonnes of force
- ISP 352 s
Payload Fairing:
|- Diameter 4.1 m
- Length 10.4 m
The vehicle's reliability statistics according to http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2013.html#rate:
For Zenit-3SL,
Code:
================================================================
Vehicle Successes/Tries Realzd Pred Consc. Last Dates
Rate Rate* Succes Fail
================================================================
Zenit 3SL/DMSL 31 35 .89 .86 0 2/1/13 1999-Eutelsat 3B Ascent Profile
1|2nd stage separation|-2239|185|0°
2|Parking orbit|180|407|0°
3|GEO-transfer|381|35799|0°
4|Target GTO|385|35636|0°
Eutelsat 3B Ascent Timeline
Control system go inertial|21:10:00|
Lift-off|21:10:03.6|
1st Stage Separation|21:12:30|
Payload fairing Separation|21:13:51|
2nd/upper Stage Separation|21:18:31|
Block-DM 1st Burn Ignition|21:18:41|
1st Burn Shutdown|21:23:20|1st Burn's Duration 00:04:39
Block-DM 2nd Burn Ignition|21:53:50|
2nd Burn Shutdown|22:00:47|1st Burn's Duration 00:06:57
Spacecraft Separation |22:10:37|
Photos of preparations of the launch will come soon.
References
http://www.sea-launch.com
http://www.yuzhmash.com
http://www.yuzhnoye.com
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com
http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru
http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/eutelsat-3b.htm
http://www.spacelaunchreport.com
http://www.eutelsat.com/en/satellites/future-satellites/launch-schedule/EUTELSAT-3B.html
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