The Cosmodrome Sea Launch received permission from the US State Department to relocate
The floating launch site Sea Launch will be relocated from the coast of the US state of California to the Russian Far East. The relevant permission from the US State Department is received. It is reported by RIA News with reference to the press service of the S7 group of companies.
The Sea Launch Spaceport will be moved from Long Beach to the village of Slavyanka south of Vladivostok, 80 km from North Korea. Transportation will begin next year, the exact date is still unknown. In order to prepare the Odyssey launch platform for relocation and obtain permission for transportation, all American and Ukrainian equipment was dismantled from it, which is not critical, since the main "filling" is Russian.
The international Sea Launch company appeared in 1995 with the participation of the Russian RSC Energia, the American Boeing company, the Norwegian Kvärner, as well as the Ukrainian enterprises of the Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash design bureaus, which produced the Zenit rocket for the cosmodrome 3SL ", the only one adapted for launch from a marine spaceport. A total of 36 launches were made, of which 33 were successful.
In 2014, the last missile was launched, as Russia stopped supplying components for rocket production, including RD-171 rocket engines, to Ukraine.
Later it became known that the Sea Launch Cosmodrome, consisting of the Odyssey launch platform and the Sea Launch control ship, will be moved to the Far East, where Sovetskaya Gavan will become the likely location.
In March this year, the Russian state-owned corporation Roscosmos announced that it would support the Sea Launch project and would work on adapting the new Soyuz-5 medium-class launch vehicle to launch from a floating platform. Work on the creation of Soyuz-5 is planned to be completed by the 2021 year, and in 2022-2025, four test launches will be carried out.
At the same time, there is information that the Russian private owner of Sea Launch S7 Space is developing its own reusable rocket based on the Soyuz-5 draft design. The media received the code name Soyuz-7 and Soyuz-7SL (Sea Launch - "Sea Launch").
Earlier, S7 Space terminated the contract with the Ukrainian enterprise Yuzhmash for the production of 12 Zenit launch vehicles for launches from the platform as part of the Sea Launch program.
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