According to a leading Russian spacecraft designer, Maxim Gonchar, the Land Launch facility, to be commissioned in the middle of next year, will be used for multiple launches of medium-weight commercial satellites from the Baikonur cosmodrome with the help of a Zenit booster rocket
The Land Launch program, based on collaboration between the Sea Launch Company, Space International Services (SIS), and the Russian Federal Space Agency, would allow up to five launches of Zenit. At least five orders for launches through this system are expected to be placed annually.
An agreement for the first commercial Land Launch mission had already been signed with PanAmSat, a company providing global video and broadcasting services via satellite. Under the contract, a Zenit-3SLB vehicle will lift the PAS-11 communications satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit from Baikonur by the end of the second quarter of 2007.
