CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A direct broadcast television satellite for Canada was successfully lofted into Earth orbit by a Proton M rocket launched Sunday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, officials confirmed early Monday.
Organized by International Launch Services (ILS) -- a joint venture between Lockheed Martin in the United States and Khrunichev in Russia -- the company's final orbital shot of 2002 demonstrated a quick recovery from a botched commercial launch one month ago.
"The Proton vehicle has once again proven its reliability," said ILS president Mark Albrecht.
An older version of the Proton rocket that uses a Block DM upper stage sent the Astra-1K spacecraft into a useless orbit on Nov. 25 after the upper stage apparently failed. The satellite eventually burned up in Earth's atmosphere.
Relying this time on a more modern version of the Russian workhorse booster, the successful launch of the Proton M gave ILS a 90 percent success rate for its 10 blast offs conducted during 2002 -- commercial missions that included five Atlas launches from Cape Canaveral, including the inaugural Atlas 5 flight.
Liftoff of the 200-foot (61-meter) rocket came right on time at 6:17 p.m. EST (2317 GMT) Sunday.Below-freezing temperatures with thick fog over the Kazakhstan steppes prevented a clear view of the liftoff via ILS's television coverage, but mission commentators reported all was well with the four-stage booster as it climbed toward space.
Some 22 minutes after launch the Proton M's first three stages all had done their job and separated, and the fourth Breeze M upper stage had completed the first of four planned burns to place the Lockheed Martin-built satellite into a low parking orbit over the planet.
Three more burns of the Breeze M upper stage took place as scheduled during the next six hours or so, shooting the Canadian payload into its intended geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth's equator.
That event was followed by spacecraft separation from the upper stage as expected six hours and 53 minutes after liftoff, said ILS spokeswoman Fran Slimmer.
It will take a few weeks of checkout and tests before the satellite, which is called Nimiq 2, will be ready to go operational for the next 12 years or so, Telesat Canada officials said.
Nimiq is a word from the Inuit people and means any object or force that unites things or binds them together. The Inuit people live in the Arctic north and represent a culture whose history goes back some 5,000 years. They live in an area that stretches from the shores of the Chukchi peninsula of Russia, east across Alaska and Canada to the southeastern coast of Greenland.
Nimiq 2 joins Nimiq 1 -- which was launched in 1999 -- and adds another 32 Ku-band transponders of broadcast capability, of which Canada's Bell ExpressVu will be the exclusive customer, according to Telesat Canada.
Telesat Canada also operates the Anik series of communication satellites and earlier this month announced it had secured funding to begin construction of the Anik F2 satellite, which when launched will feature a high-powered Ka-band payload and support Telesat's plans to geographically expand service throughout North America.
"Anik F2 will commercialize the use of the Ka-band, making it ideal for the delivery of multimedia services such as high-speed Internet, tele-medicine, tele-learning, tele-working and e-commerce," said Telesat president Larry Boisvert.
Anik also is an Inuit word, in this case meaning "little brother."
It was on Nov. 9, 1972 that Anik A1 was launched by a NASA Delta rocket for Canada, which became the first nation to have its own commercial communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit.
In celebrating the 30th anniversary of that event, Telesat officials recalled the excitement as Canada's northern communities watched "Hockey Night in Canada" broadcast live for the first time, while also being able to talk with each other using the new long-distance telephone service via satellite.
"We can see the profound impact of satellite technology on everyday life in Canada," Boisvert said. "Whether theyre used to carry information, entertainment or todays new applications in health and education, our satellites have connected Canadians to one another, and to the world."
Nimiq 2 is Telesat Canada's 14th satellite.
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