International Launch Services (ILS) is on a roll... the company has just announced their first commercial shared launch using a Proton Breeze M with the EUTELSAT 5 West B satellite and MEV-1, the first Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) developed by Orbital ATK—plus, ILS also announced the first commercial contract incorporating the use of the newly announced Proton Medium launch vehicle—both launches are for Eutelsat Communications.
Launching in 2018 will the the Eutelsat 5 West B satellite, to be built by Orbital ATK and Airbus. Artistic rendition of the satellite on orbit is courtesy of Orbital ATK.
The shared launch on Proton Breeze M will carry the EUTELSAT 5 West B satellite, built on Orbital ATK’s GEOstar ™ satellite platform, with an Airbus Defence and Space-built payload stacked on top of Orbital ATK’s MEV-1 spacecraft for launch in the last quarter of 2018. The second mission is baselined with the Proton Medium launch vehicle with launch to be conducted in the 2019-2020 timeframe. Both missions will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
These two missions for Eutelsat are included under the Multi-Launch Agreement (MLA) announced by ILS in October of last year. The MLA was designed to provide Eutelsat with schedule flexibility and assured access to space at cost effective prices over a seven-year period. The first mission launched under the MLA was the Eutelsat 9B satellite on January 30, 2016.
The Proton Medium vehicle was introduced last month, along with the Proton Light vehicle, during World Satellite Business Week in Paris. The vehicles are a product line extension of the commercial Proton Breeze M designed to expand the Proton addressable GEO market with competitive launch solutions in the small and medium satellite class range (3 to 5 metric tons). The vehicles are 2-stage versions of the time-tested and flight-proven Proton Breeze M launch system developed for exclusive commercial use by ILS.