Board meeting of Sea Launch international company to take place in St. Petersburg on July 25th-26th

A board meeting of the Sea Launch international company will take place in St. Petersburg on July 25th-26th. This information has been disclosed by Yuri Semyonov, the President of the Energia Space Missile Corporation /SMC/.

The meeting's agenda includes a discussion of the performance of the Sea Launch sea-based launching site in 2001, as well as its future development.

It's the third time the Sea Launch board meeting takes place in St. Petersburg. According to Yuri Semyonov, the board gathered twice in St. Petersburg in the late 1990s when design bureaus and shipyards of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region implemented Project Sea Launch. In particular, the custom-built Assembly and Command Ship /ACS/ and the Odyssey Launch Platform /LP/ were built with the participation of the Rubin Central Design Bureau of Marine Equipment, the Vyborg Shipyard and the Kanoneresky ship repair facility. The head of the SMC Energia stressed the decisive role of the aforesaid production plants in the project.

The Sea Launch international company was established in May 1995 to implement the Sea Launch project by the Boeing Commercial Space Company /40% of the authorised capital stock/, SMS Energia /25%/, the Norwegian Kvaerner Maritime a.s. /20%/, the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye Design Bureau /10%/ and the Ukrainian Yuzhmashzavod airspace plant /5%/.

The Sea Launch sea-based launching site has been specially designed to deliver spacecraft to the Earth orbit by the Zenit-3SL booster launched from equatorial regions. The fist vehicle was launched from the Odyssey LP in March 1999 in the nearby Christmas Island. Over the past three years, eight out of the nine launches have been successful.