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Russia’s space agency, DB Salyut, this week announced that it had won
its first contract to launch a Western satellite. In 1995 the agency is
to launch a mobile telecommunications satellite for the International Maritime
Satellite Organisation.

The Inmarsat-3 satellite will be sent aloft aboard a Russian Proton
rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It is one of
a set of four satellites which will expand Inmarsat’s mobile telecommunications
services for ships, planes and lorries. Two of the satellites will be launched
in 1994 on Atlas Centaur rockets built in the US by General Dynamics, and
the third will be launched in 1995 on Europe’s Ariane.

DB Salyut’s contract is worth $36 million, although it will cost Inmarsat
‘several million dollars’ extra to make the satellite compatible with the
Russian rocket. Inmarsat chose Proton for its reliability, despite the cost.
‘The last 22 launches in a row have been successful,’ says Bill Murray,
the programme manager in Princeton, New Jersey.