摘要: |
The report summarizes U.S. and international launch activities for calendar year 2003 and provides a historical look at the past five years of commercial launch activities. The Federal Aviation Administration's Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST) licensed eight commercial orbital launches in 2003, all of which were successful. Of the eight FAA/AST-licensed launches in 2003, five were of U.S.-built vehicles. International Launch Services (ILS) launched two Atlas 3B vehicles, with one carrying AsiaSat 4 to geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and the other lofting the final satellite for the U.S. Navy's UHF constellation to GEO. ILS also launched two Atlas 5 vehicles, sending Hellas Sat's second satellite and Cablevision's Rainbow 1 to GEO. In June, Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) successfully launched a Pegasus XL carrying the OrbView 3 remote sensing satellite to low Earth orbit (LEO). |