Land Launch

Land Launch, a subsidiary of Sea Launch, conducts commercial launches of Zenit rockets from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 45. It operates two-stage Zenit-2SLB and three stage Zenit-3SLB rockets.

The first launch was conducted on 28 April 2008 at 05:00 GMT, when a Zenit-3SLB was used to place AMOS-3 (AMOS-60) into a geosynchronous orbit.

The second flight would have launched MEASAT-3A, a Malaysian communications satellite, but the spacecraft was damaged by a crane while Land Launch was preparing it for a planned 21 August 2008 launch.

A second launch was completed on February 26, 2009 when Land Launch successfully launched the Telstar 11N mission.

Land Launch missions differ from Sea Launch missions in that the modernised Zenit-3SLB is used, as opposed to the Zenit-3SL, a smaller and hence lighter payload fairing is used, and the rocket inserts the payload directly into a geosynchronous orbit, rather than leaving it in a geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Read more about Land Launch:  Launches

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