ILS Announces Three Contract Awards at Sat 2006

MCLEAN, Va., Feb. 8, 2006/Satnews Daily/ — International Launch Services (ILS) announced on Tuesday three contract awards as it kicks off its participation this week in a satellite industry conference in Washington, D.C.

ILS could launch as many as nine satellites this year, Mark Albrecht, ILS president said, noting that only three weeks remain before the next ILS mission. That will be a Proton Breeze M launch for EADS Astrium with the Arabsat 4A satellite, scheduled for Feb. 28/March 1. The first ILS mission was the New Horizons launch on Jan. 19, using the top-of-the-line Lockheed Martin Atlas V-551 configuration with 2.5 million pounds of thrust.

The three Proton awards announced at Sat 2006 are the following:

·        Telesat will launch its Nimiq 4 satellite in 2008, for its fifth flight with ILS.

·        JSAT became the first Japanese operator to use a Russian vehicle when it scheduled its JCSAT-11 satellite on Proton for 2007. JSAT launched three previous satellites on Atlas vehicles.

·        ILS said Sirius Satellite Radio has also purchased a spot for spacecraft launch prior to December 2010. Its three in-orbit satellites were all launched by Proton in 2000.

A joint venture of Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) of Bethesda, Md. and Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center of Moscow, ILS markets and manages satellite launch missions on the American Atlas and Russian Proton vehicles.

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