Posted: Tue, May 27, 2014, 6:33 AM ET (1033 GMT)
Commercial launch company Sea Launch performed on Monday its first mission since a launch failure over a year ago, successfully placing a European communications satellite into orbit. The Zenit-3SL rocket lifted off from the company's floating launch platform on the Equator in the Pacific Ocean at 5:10 pm EDT (2110 GMT) and inserted its payload, the Eutelsat 3B satellite, into geostationary transfer orbit about one hour later. The satellite, a Eurostar E3000 model by Airbus Defence and Space, weighed nearly 6,000 kilograms at launch and will be used by Eutelsat to provide C-, Ka-, and Ku-band services from 3 degrees east in GEO. The launch was the first for Sea Launch since the loss of Intelsat 27 in a launch failure in early 2013.
