A Sea Launch Zenit-3SL vehicle carrying the NSS-8 satellite for SES New Skies suffered a catastrophic failure Jan. 30, exploding at liftoff.

As of Wednesday morning, Sea Launch held comment on the status of the platform, saying only that the vehicle “experienced an anomaly during launch operations. All personnel at the launch site are safe and accounted for." Paula Korn, a Sea Launch spokeswoman, said the company was planning to issue an update late Wednesday, “after we complete our assessment.”

A live Internet broadcast of the launch was underway before the transmission was reportedly cut off as a fireball enveloped the platform at the end of launch countdown. A video clip tagged “Rocket Blows Up” was subsequently posted on YouTube.com, where it appeared the vehicle never made it off the floating Odyssey launch platform.

The NSS-8 satellite, built by Boeing and owned by Netherlands-based SES New Skies, was equipped with nearly 100 transponders for high-speed Internet, broadcasting and other services. SES New Skies is a subsidiary of European satellite giant SES Global. The satellite was intended to replace NSS-703, but the loss of NSS-8 is not expected to have an impact on existing customers or revenues, SES New Skies said. NSS-703 will remain at 57° East and will serve customers until at least 2009, the company said. NSS-9, under construction at Orbital Sciences Corp., is scheduled for launch in 2009 to replace NSS-5, which then will replace NSS-703.

Long Beach, Calif.-based Sea Launch is a partnership of Boeing of the United States, Russia’s RSC-Energia, Aker ASA of Norway and SDO Yuznoye/PO Yuzhmash of Ukraine.
Less than two weeks ago, Rob Peckham, president and general manager of Sea Launch, had said the company was “hitting our stride” with six launches scheduled for 2007. NSS-8 was the first of the year’s planned missions; others are scheduled for Thuraya, Intelsat, Hughes Network Systems, DirecTV and EchoStar. Sea Launch will establish a Failure Review Oversight Board to determine the root cause of the explosion.
 
"It’s a shock,” said Marco Caceres, a space analyst for Teal Group. “There’s been no indication of any problems for the last few years. You have a good thing going, and then you’re completely shocked.”
Pending further assessment, Caceres said “clearly it’s going to set them back at least six months. It will depend on what the investigation concludes.”

Industry colleague and business competitor Clay Mowry, president of Arianespace, said “these types of things happen; it’s part of the risk of what we do, and why it’s so hard. I feel nothing but empathy about the situation. It’s a difficult thing to get through, and a challenge for the people involved.”
Arianespace Flight 157 suffered a mission failure in December 2002. In that instance, an Ariane 5-ECA rocket failed three minutes into its maiden flight.

In Sea Launch’s case, however – since the Zenit-3SL never cleared the launch pad – both the vehicle and the Odyssey platform, a converted oil rig, will have to be investigated.
“They’re going to have to assess the damage to the platform. It’s another whole set of issues,” Mowry noted.

Caceres agreed that the relative difficulty required to repair a platform at sea rather than one constructed on land added to the disadvantages now faced by Sea Launch. "Launch pads are designed to take some pretty severe punishment,” he said. “On a converted oil platform, it’s more difficult.”

Pending further assessment, analyst Max Engel of Frost & Sullivan suggests that the condition of the Odyssey platform may ultimately determine whether Sea Launch’s viability itself remains afloat.
“In the short tactical term, [the failure] absolutely means they won’t make their six launches this year. A launch investigation will take a month or longer,” he said. "In that sense, there will be problems for people who need to get their satellites launched.
"But my real concern is, what is the state of the launch platform? If there’s substantive damage to it, if you think about what happens in these instances, generally it’ s not OK when something blows up.”
 
While noting the preliminary uncertainty of the episode, Engel also wondered about Sea Launch’s long-term health.
"When they started out [in 1995], they talked of very fast turnaround,” he said. “If you look at investments made in that climate, they had very different financial assumptions than you would now.”
Engel explained “this is a bad time to see Sea Launch struggle, in terms of what the management and market dynamics are. I’m sure that Sea Launch will swear that this won’t stop them, but [majority shareholder] Boeing almost closed [its own] satellite production,” he said, adding “they’re being very selective about where to leverage their technology and expertise.”
 
Engel added “I absolutely am not saying [Sea Launch] won’t rebuild.
"We just don’t know how bad it is – but I think there is a possibility, given the very different climate for demands and other things,” he explained, “I think there’s a significant chance that if the pad is significantly damaged, that’s the end of Sea Launch.”
 
If less dire in his speculation, Caceres agreed that the best Sea Launch might hope for in 2007 is half of what had been planned at the start of the week. Rather than six launches, he said the company would do well with “half of those,” and only if all goes well after the investigation.
 
Meanwhile, he said, “the sales reps from all the major companies are on the phone immediately. They know what the manifest is for the competition, and what their customers’ needs are.”

Spokeswoman Judy Blake of Hughes Network Systems said it was too early to know how the failure might affect the schedule or launch for its Spaceway-3 satellite slated by Sea Launch for early this year. “They’re just starting the evaluation. We’re very disappointed.”
 
Hughes had been scheduled to launch Spaceway-3 to geosynchronous transfer orbit from the platform. With a mass of more than 6,000 kg, the communications satellite is designed to provide broadband IP services to enterprise, government, and consumer/small business customers. Hughes received a listing on NASDAQ in September 2006.

Caceres said “one of the dangers for Sea Launch is that they would lose a customer or two. They need to go up, and the longer they are delayed, they’re losing money.”

Other options open to customers seeking to launch in the short term include rescheduling a lunch with Arianespace or ILS. "There’s really no one else who’s going to launch those kind of satellites,” Caceres said.