Israeli communications satellite launched
MOSCOW (AFP) — A rocket carrying an Israeli communications satellite was successfully launched Monday from a Russian base in Kazakhstan, television footage showed.
State Russian television showed a Zenit rocket carrying the Israeli AMOS-3 satellite blasting off from the Baikonur cosmodrome four days after technical problems delayed the original launch.
"The decoupling of the rocket's second stage... was successful," a spokesman for the Russian military's Space Forces told the Interfax news agency.
The satellite launch was run by US-based consortium Sea Launch in cooperation with Moscow-based Space International Services.
The 1.3-tonnes AMOS-3 was to be placed in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometres (22,000 miles) from Earth.
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At 05:00 GMT this morning, the maiden flight of the Ukrainian-built Zenit-3SLB rocket lifted off from Site 45/1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Atop it was the AMOS-3 communications satellite for Israeli company Spacecom. The satellite separated from the carrier rocket directly into a geosynchronous orbit, several hours after launch.

The Zenit-3SLB is a modernised version of the Zenit-3SL, used by Sea Launch. New features include an upgraded guidance and control system, first flown on the Zenit-2M in June 2007. Today's flight was also the first conducted by Land Launch, a subsidiary of the international Sea Launch consortium, and the first launch of a three-stage Zenit rocket from Baikonur. The first Land Launch mission was originally scheduled for 2007, but was delayed after another Zenit exploded on its launch pad in late January 2007. A further delay from Thursday morning occurred when the errector/transporter component of the launch pad failed to back away from the rocket.

This was the 22th orbital launch of 2008. The next Zenit launch is scheduled for late May, when a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL will place the Galaxy 18 satellite into orbit. Launched a little over an hour after an Indian PSLV placed ten satellites into orbit, it also marked the first occurrence for 2008 of two orbital launches on the same day as each other, in GMT.