[Satellite News 02-25-09] AsiaSat has backed out of a launch contract with Sea Launch,  moving its AsiaSat-5 satellite because Sea Launch could not provide the customer with a desirable timeframe, Sea Launch spokeswoman Paula Korn told Satellite News.
    “It didn’t surprise us,” said Korn. “We had been working and talking to AsiaSat for a long time on several options to meet the timeframe they were looking for and we just weren’t able to do it,” she said.
    As a result, International Launch Services (ILS) now is scheduled to launch AsiaSat-5 in third quarter of 2009. ILS Spokeswoman Karen Monaghan told Satellite News that AsiaSat’s timeframe fell within an available slot for the launch provider. “It was an ideal situation for us,” she said. “We sold existing inventory. We were able to fill a near-term vacancy that was in the manifest. With mission integration activity, the work that is specific to the actual mission design is usually completed within the last few months before the launch. This mission is not an insertion, but a mission assignment, so AsiaSat was able to take a slot that was already there with hardware that was already built.”
    AsiaSat CEO Peter Jackson said the contract shift was driven by the demands of its customers, which are basing their business plans on Asiasat 5. “With this launch opportunity with  ILS we are setting forth a strategy to launch AsiaSat 5 in keeping with  our planned replacement program for AsiaSat 2. ILS Proton offers us the schedule assurance that we need to ensure continuity of service to our customers at the orbital location of 100.5 degrees East.”
    AsiaSat-5 is being built by Space Systems/Loral and is scheduled to be delivered to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in early summer.
Despite the loss of the mission, Sea Launch maintains good relations with AsiaSat, said Korn. “We’re talking to them about another potential launch down the road with another satellite,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world for Sea Launch.”
    Commenting on the contract shift, industry analyst Tim Farrar told Satellite News that despite the inevitable questions about the strength of Sea Launch’s business model that may arise, shuffling of launch services are more likely to happen in the current capacity crunch. “There is plenty of demand for launch services to accommodate the wave of orders placed in the 2005 to 2007 timeframe with 2009-2010 launch dates,” said Farrar. “The industry may have questioned Sea Launch in the past, but I think the question about business models needs to be asked in a couple of years, when presumably, the current downturn will have affected the satellite industry a little bit more and we’ll see a decline in orders and launches.”