Ukrainian Zenit Plays American Rock and Roll

On the night of May 9, at 1:10 a.m. Kyiv time, a Ukrainian-made Zenit-3SL booster rocket with a US spacecraft onboard was launched from the Odysseus floating platform in the Pacific. This is the current year’s second successful takeoff as part of the Sea Launch international program. The two carrier rockets put into orbit two similar satellites to relay radio broadcasts over of North America.

According to a press release of the Pivdenne State Design Bureau Public Relations Center, the launch and flight of the Dnipropetrovsk-made Zenit “came off well and in compliance with the flight program.” The XM-Radio-1 (Rock) space vehicle was put precisely into a geostationary orbit, following which it made an ion engine assisted maneuver and started work. The first of the twin satellites, XM- Radio-2 (Roll), was put into orbit on March 19. The PR center press release also reports that both space vehicles, equipped with French-made transmitters, were manufactured by Boeing on order from the XM Satellite Radio company. Designed to function for fifteen years, they are supposed to relay radio broadcasts in the S range via 100 digital channels. Both satellites, Rock and Roll, are “the most powerful space items of this kind ever made.”

It is worth noting that launching the latter, scheduled for January 9, 2001, was postponed by four months due to satellite malfunctions. The attempt to repeat the rocket launch, scrubbed seconds before the takeoff, ended in failure. The damaged engine had to be sent for repairs, and the satellite was launched on May 9 by another carrier rocket stored at the base port of Long Beach, California. A total of eight Zenit-3SL booster rockets have been launched in two years under Sea Launch, the Pivdenne Design Bureau press release states.