Launch Success
Liftoff Time (GMT)
01:29:59
Sunday March 28, 1999
First flight of Sea Launch, and from the Odyssey Plateform. Zenit becomes the third launcher to lift off from the sea, after Scout and Shtil.
DemoSat was the dummy payload on the first Boeing Sea Launch mission. The Zenit-3SL booster rocket lifted off from the Odyssey floating platform on the equator at 154 degrees W longitude. The DemoSat payload was an instrumented dynamic model of an HS-702 satellite built by Boeing Commercial Space/Kent. The spacecraft consisted of just a 4.5 ton assembly of pipes and plates simulating a HS-702 spacecraft. Thirteen minutes after launch, the Blok DM-SL upper stage completed its first burn and entered a 180 km × 735 km × 1.2 degree parking orbit. A second burn 47 minutes after launch placed the satellite in a 638 × 36064 km × 1.2 degree geostationary transfer orbit. Three hours later, a third DM-SL burn lowered the stage's perigee so that it would re-enter quickly. DemoSat was to feature as a last minute add-on the NATSweb (Naval Academy Tracking Satellite, Weber State) communication payload of the Naval Academy satellite program, but the addition would have required a complete a total re-submission by Boeing for their entire Sea Launch System as the launcher's Export License (completed a year before) did not include an active payload. Therefore the NATSweb was not included in the launch.
Geostationary Transfer Orbit
1 Payload
4,500 kilograms
Manufacturer
YuzhmashRocket
Height: 59.46m
Payload to Orbit
LEO: 13,740 kg
GTO: 6,000 kg
Liftoff Thrust
7,257 Kilonewtons
Fairing
Diameter: 4.1m
Height: 10.4m
Stages
3
32nd
Mission
1st
Mission of 1999
14th
Orbital launch attempt