Zenit-3SL
Sign in to saveKey facts
- Rocket.family
- Zenit
- Rocket.image
- 80px
- Rocket.caption
- Zenit-3SL
- Rocket.function
- Carrier rocket
- Rocket.manufacturer
- Yuzhmash (Zenit)RKK Energia (Block-DM)Boeing (fairing)
- Rocket.country origin
- Ukraine
- Rocket.stages
- Three
- Rocket.derivatives
- Zenit-3SLB
- Rocket.status
- Retired
- Rocket.sites
- Ocean Odyssey
- Rocket.launches
- 36
- Rocket.success
- 32
- Rocket.fail
- 3
- Rocket.partial
- 1
- Rocket.first
- 28 March 1999 (test flight)
- Rocket.last
- 26 May 2014 (Eutelsat 3B)
- Rocket/Payload.location
- GTO
- Rocket/Stage.type
- Stage
via Wikipedia infobox
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Reliability
- See also
- References
The Zenit-3SL was an expendable carrier rocket operated by Sea Launch. First flown in 1999, it was launched 36 times, with three failures and one partial failure. It was a member of the Zenit family of rockets, and is built by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau. RKK Energia produced the Block DM-SL upper stage, whilst the payload fairing was produced by Boeing. Launches were conducted from the Ocean Odyssey platform anchored on the equator in the Pacific Ocean, at a point with 154°W longitude, about 370 kilometres east of Kiritimati.
The Zenit-3SL design began in the late 1980s as the Zenit-3, a proposed replacement for the Proton-K, which would have used a Zenit-2 rocket with a Block D upper stage. This proposal was shelved after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as Russia inherited the space programme, however the Zenit was manufactured in Ukrainian SSR. Boeing became involved in the programme in 1994. The design was subsequently modified, with a modified version of the Block DM replacing the Block D.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Zenit-3SL” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.