International Launch Services, Inc. (ILS) is a joint venture with exclusive rights to the worldwide sale of commercial Angara and

Proton rocket Proton (, formal designation: UR-500) is an expendable launch system used for both commercial and Russian government space launches. The first Proton rocket was launched in 1965. Modern versions of the launch system are still in use , making it ...

launch services. Proton launches take place at the

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian Human spaceflight, crewed spaceflights are l ...

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

while Angara is launched from the Plesetsk and

Vostochny Cosmodrome The Vostochny Cosmodrome () is a Russian space launch facility in the Amur Oblast, located above the 51st parallel north in the Russian Far East. It was built to help reduce Russia’s reliance on the Baikonur Cosmodrome which is located on lan ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Ownership

ILS was formed in 1995 as a

private spaceflight Private spaceflight is any spaceflight development that is not conducted by a government agency, such as NASA or ESA. During the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and United States pionee ...

partnership between

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...

(LM), Khrunichev and Energia. ILS initially co-marketed non-military launches on both the American

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

and the Russian

Proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , Hydron (chemistry), H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' (elementary charge). Its mass is slightly less than the mass of a neutron and approximately times the mass of an e ...

expendable launch vehicles. With the Atlas V launch of the SES Astra 1KR satellite on 20 April 2006, ILS had made 100 launches, 97 of which were successful. In September 2006, Lockheed-Martin announced its intention to sell its ownership interests in Lockheed Khrunichev Energia International, Inc. (LKEI) and International Launch Services, Inc. (ILS) to Space Transport Inc. Space Transport Inc. was formed specifically for this transaction by Mario Lemme, who has been a consultant to ILS since its inception and a board member for more than three years. The transaction between Lockheed Martin and Space Transport Inc. completed in October 2006. Lockheed Martin has retained all rights related to marketing the commercial Atlas vehicle and is continuing to offer Atlas launch services to the worldwide commercial market through its subsidiary, Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services, Inc. (LMCLS). ILS, no longer affiliated with Lockheed Martin, continued to market the Proton launch vehicles to commercial clients. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. All Atlas V launches are now managed by United Launch Alliance, a joint-venture between

and

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

( IDS/Defense, Space & Security/Launch Services) formed in December 2006, with all commercial Atlas V launches sub-contracted for ULA by LMCLS. In October 2006, Krunichev spokesman said that the firm was ready to buy the stake being sold by

. Russian space agency spokesman said that despite that Lockheed is selling its stake to Space Transport, Khrunichev may eventually end up owning it. He expressed the desire of the Russian side to increase its presence in the joint venture. Space Transport Inc, registered in the

British Virgin Islands The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands and north-west ...

and headquartered in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

, denied that it would be selling the stake. In May 2008, Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, a

n company, acquired all of Space Transport's interest and is now the majority

shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the ...

in ILS. ILS will remain an American company and headquarters are currently in Reston,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, near

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

where approximately 60 employees are based. In April 2019, Glavkosmos and ILS announced that they will be working closer together in the future, in order to bring "pricing squarely in line with our customer's needs..." and to jointly work on solutions that facilitate "...better products, more services ..and a capability to implement a broader and more flexible set of strategic launch agreements...". ILS' ownership structure remains unchanged and it continues to act independently as an American corporation. Any future change contemplated to change ILS' ownership structure, in place since 2008, would be subject to regulatory approvals.

Proton launches

In May 2008, ILS had a backlog of 22 orders, totaling approximately US$2 billion, and had flown 45 commercial Proton missions since 1996. By June 2009, the backlog had grown to 24 firm missions. The 50th ILS Proton launch took place in early 2009. In January 2014, ILS had an order book of 14 launches worth more than US$1 billion, with up to 6 launches planned for 2014. Most Proton payloads are too massive to launch with the less powerful Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket, and there were no spare

Ariane 5 Ariane 5 is a retired European heavy-lift space launch vehicle operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in French Guiana. It was used to deliver payloads into geostationar ...

launch opportunities, so Proton customers cannot easily switch to other launchers. However, as of 2018, the Proton rockets had a very low launch rate with no commercial launches in 2018 and two commercial launches in 2019 due to multiple factors including the emergence of new commercial launch providers like

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

and a spate of Proton/Breeze M launch failures. In the last few years, most launch contracts for large commercial geostationary satellites — which have declined overall as more operators look at smaller spacecraft sizes — have gone to SpaceX and

Arianespace Arianespace SA is a French company founded in March 1980 as the world's first commercial launch service provider. It operates two launch vehicles: Vega C, a Small-lift launch vehicle, small-lift rocket, and Ariane 6, a Medium-lift launch vehicl ...

. Proton flew its last scheduled commercial mission on 9 October 2019, delivering Eutelsat 5 West B and MEV-1 to geostationary orbit.

Atlas launches

After October 2006, ILS focused solely on the Proton launch vehicle, so no longer offered Atlas launches. The first Atlas launch was the Atlas IIAS Intelsat 704 launch on 10 January 1995 and the last was the

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was developed by Lockheed Martin and has been operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA) since 2006. Primarily used to ...

Astra 1KR launch on 20 April 2006.

Angara launches

ILS began marketing the Angara rocket to commercial customers in July 2015. The company's first commercial Angara mission is expected to launch in no earlier than 2023 carrying Kompsat 6, an

Earth observation satellite An Earth observation satellite or Earth remote sensing satellite is a satellite used or designed for Earth observation (EO) from orbit, including spy satellites and similar ones intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitoring, me ...

operated by the

Korea Aerospace Research Institute The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI; ), established in 1989, is the aeronautics and space agency of South Korea. Its main laboratories are located in Daejeon, in the Daedeok Science Town. KARI's vision is to continue building upon in ...

, but the satellite is now planned to be launched by the Vega-C launch vehicle.

References

External links