European satellite sunk in Pacific after launch failure

MOSCOW (AFP) Dec 10, 2002
A huge European telecommunications satellite which has been cast adrift in space after a failed launch was sunk in the Pacific Ocean early Tuesday, Russian officials said.

Astra 1K, which had been launched off the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan last month, plunged into south Pacific after its owners decided to eliminate the drifting satellite, military space officials said as quoted by the Interfax news agency.

The satellite, which according to its designers was the largest civil telecommunications satellite ever launched, belonged to the SES Astra, part of the SES Global, a Luxembourg-based world satellite operator.

The SES Global satellite network, which includes 29 satellites to date, enables transmission of over 1,100 television and radio channels as well as internet and multimedia.

1K was to have been placed in geostationary orbit in a slot 36,000 kilometres (22,370 miles) from the earth, but had never reached it due to its booster rocket failure.

SPACE.WIRE