British Telecom Satellite Drops Into Ocean After Launch

A Ukrainian- and Russian-built Sea Launch rocket carrying a British telecommunications satellite failed moments after being launched Sunday from a floating platform near the equator.

It was only the third launch for the Boeing-led venture, which uses a converted ocean-going oil rig as a launch pad. It successfully launched a dummy satellite a year ago and a DirecTV satellite in October.

The lost satellite was valued at $100 million, said the owner, London-based ICO Global Communications.

Will Trafton, president of Sea Launch, whose home port is in Long Beach, said in a statement that the team “is extremely disappointed with the failure.”

The rocket had lifted off from the platform, about 1,400 miles south-southeast of the Hawaiian Islands, when it and its satellite payload plunged into the Pacific Ocean.

“We’re going to have to analyze the data,” Sea Launch spokeswoman Paula Korn said. “We suspect there was something wrong with the second stage” of the Zenit rocket. An investigation into the cause of the failure has begun.

None of the Sea Launch personnel was injured, nor did the 20-story launch platform, a onetime oil platform, sustain damage, Korn said. She could not estimate the amount of the loss.

Sea Launch is a partnership of the Boeing Co., the Ukrainian and Russian rocket manufacturers, and an Anglo-Norwegian group that built the launch platform and an accompanying assembly and command ship. The firm is competing in the growing commercial space business using its floating platform instead of a traditional land-based launch site.

The lost satellite, built by Hughes Space and Communications in El Segundo, was the first of a group of 10 designed to carry telecommunications, voice and data, and cellular calls for ICO, which was designed to test ICO’s system for global mobile communications.

ICO spokesman Michael Johnson told Bloomberg News that the satellite was fully insured, and that the company hoped the crash would have a minimal impact on its business plan.

He said ICO needed only 10 of the 12 satellites it had ordered to operate its network.

It was to be ICO’s first satellite launch. The satellite-telephony company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August after failing to raise enough funds to start its service.

Cellular telephone pioneer Craig McCaw and Subhash Chandra, who runs India’s most popular television network, won court approval in December to purchase the company for about $1.2 billion. The investment will allow ICO to upgrade its satellite technology to include data services, including Internet and e-mail.