ILS Tries To Reach .750 For Successful Launches This Year

The eyes of the aerospace world are on Russia this week, watching to see whether another scheduled launch of a Proton M booster is able to go off without any problems. Alas, there's already been a monkeywrench thrown into that plan.

International Launch Services, services provider for the launch of the Telesat Nimiq 4 satellite onboard the giant Russian rocket, announced Thursday the launch has been postponed by 24 hours so that engineers can replace a faulty avionics unit.

ILS says "a component malfunction was detected in the LV control system during preflight testing." Launch is now scheduled to take place from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 0348 Saturday morning local time (1748 EDT Friday.)

As ANN reported, the Proton M was cleared for flight duty in June, following the failed March 15 launch of the AMC-14 satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. During that mission, the Breeze M upper stage shut down two minutes before the end of the planned second burn of its engine. The AMC-14 satellite survived, and was released into a lower-than-planned orbit.

It was the third failure in as many years for the Proton M, and the second in six months. A Russian State Commission determined the failure was caused by a ruptured exhaust gas conduit, which led to a shutdown of the turbo pump feeding the Breeze M engine.

The commission recommended a number of corrective actions, including replacement of the existing conduit with a thicker-walled conduit. Following the modifications -- performed by Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, builders of the Proton M -- Russia engineers cleared the booster to return to flight.

In August, a Proton M successfully launched the Inmarsat 4 F3... one the biggest commercial satellites ever built. In February, ILS successfully launched the Thor 5 satellite

ILS and Khrunichev would very much like to go 3-1 on the year, with Saturday's planned launch.

FMI: www.ilslaunch.com