ILS Launches ICO Satellite in 1st Atlas Mission of Year; ILS Marks 2 Successful Flights on 2 Vehicles in 4 Days.Business and Technology Editors CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) is the East Coast space launch facility of the United States Department of Defense. Located on Cape Canaveral in the State of Florida, it depends on Patrick Air Force Base, home of the 45th Space Wing. CCAFS is adjacent to the John F. , Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 2001 An Atlas IIAS rocket carried a satellite for ICO Global Communications into orbit early this morning, marking the first Atlas launch of the year for International Launch Services International Launch Services (or ILS) was formed in 1995 as a private spaceflight partnership between the United States defense contractor Lockheed Martin (LM) (LM sold their part later) and the Russian firms Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center and RSC (ILS ILS In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the Israeli Shekel. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. ). This was the second successful launch in four days for ILS, of McLean, Va. ILS is the only launch services company to have two integrated launch vehicle offerings: the U.S.-built Atlas and the Russian-built Proton. On Saturday (June 16) in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, a Proton vehicle launched the ASTRA ASTRA Ancient Instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application ASTRA Australian Strategic Air Traffic Management Group ASTRA Arab Supply and Trading Corporation ASTRA Automatic System for Transport Analysis ASTRA Automatic Satellite Tracking Research Antenna 2C broadcast satellite for ILS customer Societe Europeenne des Satellites. The ICO launch lifted off from the Cape's Pad 36B at 12:41 a.m. EDT today, 4:41 GMT. After a flight of nearly 113 minutes, the spacecraft was separated from the Atlas vehicle into its target circular, medium earth orbit Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), sometimes called Intermediate Circular Orbit (ICO), is the region of space around the Earth above low Earth orbit (2,000 kilometres (1243 mi) of about 10,100 km (about 5500 mi). The satellite is a specially modified version of the Boeing 601 model built by Boeing Satellite Systems, Inc., which contracted with ILS for the launch in order to deliver the satellite in orbit. "This launch is the 55th consecutive success for Atlas," said ILS President Mark Albrecht. "We're proud of Atlas' reliability, and appreciate that Boeing and ICO had the confidence to trust this mission to ILS." He noted that two launches occurring in such a short period of time highlights ILS' versatility. "With the Lockheed Martin Atlas and the Khrunichev-Energia Proton families, ILS has a range of vehicles to meet any customer's payload and schedule needs," he said. ILS is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp. of the United States and Russian companies Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center[1] (ГКНПЦ им. М. В. Хруничева in Russian) is a Moscow-based producer of space-launch systems. and RSC Energia. ILS offers the broadest range of launcher products in the world along with the highest reliability in the industry. The Atlas rockets and their Centaur upper stages are built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Lockheed Martin Space Systems is one of the 4 major business divisions of Lockheed Martin. It is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. From a rich history of major companies Lockheed Martin has brought them together to offer design, integration, and production of: For more information, visit www.ilslaunch.com. |
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