Historic commercial

rocket launch set for this month in Kiribati

AN international consor tium led by Boeing

plans to make history

this month with the first commercial space launch of a

rocket with a functional

payload from a floating

platform.

Early reports said the launch was scheduled for last month but Sea Launch says it would take more time to prepare for the event than a liftoff last month would allow.

“We take it one day at a time. But if it means we lose a little time, we’d rather have a delayed success than an on-time failure,” Sea Launch spokesman Terrance Scott said. No specific launch date has been set, he said. Meanwhile, mission operators have continued to prepare the Zenit-3SL booster rocket and its satel lite payload and to test the

launch systems. The Ukrainian booster rocket is set to blast into space from a platform in Kiribati, carrying a commu nications satellite owned by Hughes Electronics, part of General Motors.

Ukraine and Russia have been working with Boeing to develop the Sea Launch program, although there have been con cerns over the reliability of the Zenit rockets. The consortium made a suc cessful test flight in March, launching a 200-foot rocket carrying a five-ton

dummy payload.

Customers demanded a dummy load be used in the March test after a Zenit rocket crashed in September 1998, destroying 12 Globalstar communica tions satellites worth US$l9O million.

The remote launch site avoids risks associated with populated areas and

takes advantage of the Earth’s high rotational speed at the equator, which allows for heavier payloads of up to five tons. “We hope the launch will be successful. It should mark the start of a new era in international space coopera tion,’’ said Eduard Kuznetsov, deputy head of Ukraine’s National Space Agency.

The project has been devel oped over four years at a cost of about USSSOO million.

Boeing owns 40 percent and partners include RSC Energia of Russia and KB Yuzh noye/PO Yuzhmash of Ukraine. The project has put Kiribati in the spotlight inter

nationally, especially its ideal

location on the equator. (Reuters/CNN) ■

A successful test conducted earlier this year has Boeing hopeful of note good things to come