DISH Network loses new satellite via Russian Proton rocket

By William Atkins
Monday, 17 March 2008 18:28

Science - Space

The AMC-14 satellite, specifically, would have provided direct-to-home television programming for DISH Network (owned by EchoStar Corporation) for its North American customers.

The 9,000-pound-plus AMC-14 satellite, built by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems, is owned by New Jersey-based SES Americom, a private satellite services company that is one of three major parts of Luxembourg-based SES S.A.

The satellite was successfully launched at 5:18 local time on Saturday, March 15, 2008 (23:18:55 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on Friday, March 14, 2008) aboard an expendable Proton-M/Briz-M launch vehicle, which is used for both commercial and government purposes.

The satellite was launched from launch pad LC-200/39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Proton-M/Briz-M launch system is built at the Khrunichev plant in Moscow, Russia.

The Briz-M upper stage, also known as Proton KM, is a Russian orbit insertion booster stage. It is used to place payloads into orbits with an apogee of about 22,233 miles (35,780 kilometers), a perigee of about 4,368 miles (7,030 kilometers), and an inclination of 17.3 degrees.

The satellite should have been placed in a final geostationary orbit at 61.5 degrees west longitude. However, the Breeze-M single engine, powered with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, quit about two minutes, thirteen seconds earlier than scheduled on a 34-minute burn.

Instead of being in an average 22,233-mile (35,780-kilometer) geostationary orbit, it is now in an orbit that is about 5,000 miles below, at about 17,400 miles (28,000 kilometers). Such an orbit is called a medium Earth-orbit (MEO).

Because of the failure of the Breeze-M upper stage rocket the AMC-14 satellite is now in an unusable orbit.

However, some options are available to correct the orbital problem. Pleases read on.