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TS News - Hughes To Use More Sea Launches

TELE-satellit News, 28 October 1996

Hughes To Use More Sea Launches
  SEATTLE, Washington, USA, 96/10/25 (TS) -- Hughes Space and Communications
International has announced it will use options it holds on three additional
launches with Sea Launch. The launches will help send into orbit a
constellation of 12 satellites for ICO Global Communications beginning in
late 1988.

  Sea Launch Co. is an international commercial space venture led by Boeing
Commercial Space Co., Seattle, and its partners RSC-Energia (Moscow),
Kvaerner Norway), and NPO-Yuzhnoye (Ukraine). The company is building a
large, semi-submersible vessel to serve as an ocean-going launch platform.
Sea Launch will operate from a U.S. home port, now under construction in
Long Beach, Calif.

  The first Sea Launch mission will take place in June 1998, when the
company will launch Hughes' first Model 702 high-power telecommunications
satellite. The three additional launches announced will be for Hughes Model
601 satellites, that will become part of ICO Global Communications' planned
constellation of 12 satellites.  These satellites will be in a medium Earth
orbit some 6,400 miles high, and will provide satellite-enabled global
phone, data, facsimile and basic messaging services, primarily through
hand-held phones similar in size, weight and design  to current cellular units.

  There is now a total of 18 firm launch orders announced to date by Sea
Launch Co. In addition to 13 orders (and additional options) held by Hughes,
five launch orders are held by Space Systems/Loral.

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