CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Far from any dry land, a communications satellite is ready to be orbited atop a Ukrainian-built rocket Friday, launched from a platform floating on the equator in the Pacific Ocean.
| Live Sea Launch Coverage |
| Liftoff of the Sea Launch Zenit 3-SL rocket is expected at 6:42 p.m. EDT (2242 GMT) Friday. The launch window is one hour in duration. SPACE.com is carrying live streaming video of the countdown and launch right now. |
For PanAmSat, owner and operator of the PAS-9 satellite, the launch is an important next step in growing its constellation of orbiting spacecraft to increase the company's reach around the world.
But for Sea Launch, the company providing the launch service, the mission has taken on a "do or die" flavor that very well could determine whether this innovative commercial launch firm will survive into the 21st Century.
 The Zenit 3-SL rocket Sea Launch intends to use to launch the PAS-9 satellite is lifted into a vertical position as part of pre-launch tests staged at Sea Launch's home port in Long Beach, Calif. Sea Launch image.
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The reason: Sea Launch's last rocket wound up at the bottom of the Pacific instead of in orbit over Earth.
Two successful missions preceded the failure of the third, and now Sea Launch officials are confident and hopeful all will go well with this fourth try.
"Its very important that we have a success," Wilbur Trafton, Sea Launch president and general manager, said before the company's two launch operation ships set sail for the equator earlier this month.
"We would be in a very difficult situation if we were to fail in two out of four tries," Trafton said.
Software error
Following the failure in March it was determined that faulty software allowed the rocket to launch with an open valve in its second stage.
"It was an error, a single line of code," said Thad Sandford, vice president of Boeing Space and Communications Group, which is a partner with several other firms in the Sea Launch venture.
The open valve allowed helium gas to leak away from the rocket, causing the rocket's second stage engine to shut down long before it was supposed to. Unable to reach orbit, the Zenit 3-SL rocket fell back toward the planet and crashed some 2,672 miles (4,300 kilometers) from the floating launch site.
 An artist's concept shows how the PAS-9 satellite will look in orbit over Earth. Hughes Space and Communications image.
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Industry analysts say the outlook for Sea Launch is still bright, especially since they were able to recover so quickly following the March failure, but from a financial perspective the company would have a very difficult time recovering from another incident.
Assuming all goes well, the modified Zenit rocket will deploy the Hughes Space and Communications-built PAS-9 satellite that will be used by PanAmSat to relay television signals, including direct broadcast service, to the Western hemisphere.
"The deployment of PAS-9 will reaffirm PanAmSats leadership in the delivery of satellite-based services throughout the Atlantic Ocean Region, specifically in Latin America," said Robert Bednarek, PanAmSats executive vice president and chief technology officer.
Bednarek said that with this launch PanAmSat's investment in the region will reach nearly $2 billion, noting that Latin America is the company's second largest market after the United States.
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