U.S. Suspends Boeing Project To Launch Satellites Off Platform, Report Says

Copyright c 1998 Nando.net
Copyright c 1998 AFP

WASHINGTON (August 8, 1998 9:01 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - The United States has suspended Boeing's international project to launch satellites off a platform in the Pacific Ocean, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

The State Department suspended Sea Launch July 27 after determining that Boeing had disclosed sensitive U.S. space information to Russian and Ukrainian engineers working on the joint venture.

Sources cited in the article said that once security measures are in place, the suspension would likely be lifted. The suspension, however, could delay the initial rocket launch scheduled for early 1999.

The decision to suspend the program stems from a Justice Department investigation of Loral Space and Communications Ltd. A Loral employee faxed a technical report on rocketry to Beijing officials in 1996 after a company satellite was destroyed in the explosion of a Chinese rocket, the newspaper reported.

Sea Launch, which began in 1995, expects to hurl its satellites into space from a Ukrainian Zenith rocket in the Pacific near the equator.

The cost for a rocket launch is estimated between $70 million and $100 million. Total cost for the Sea Launch program is $1 billion. Boeing owns 40 percent of the joint venture while the Russian firm Enerquia owns 25 percent.

The Norwegian company Kvaerner has a 20 percent share in the project and Ioujnoe and Ioujmachzavod, two Ukrainian firms own 15 percent.