[Satellite TODAY 12-13-10] The Baikonur Cosmodrome control center has placed a temporary ban on Proton rocket missions and has postponed International Launch Services’ (ILS) Dec. 20 launch of Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat telecommunications satellite, according to a Dec. 10 report by the Russian State Commission.
    The delays follow a failed Proton-M launch Dec. 5 that left three Russian Glonass-M navigation satellites in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii. The report determined that the Proton M’s performance was not at fault for the launch failure. However, the Ka-Sat mission team of ILS, Khrunichev, Eutelsat and Astrium are standing down at the launch site for about a week and will use the additional time to thoroughly review the preliminary report and data, the commission said.
    Ka-Sat will work with eight main gateways and two back-up gateways located across Europe and connected to the Internet by a fiber backbone ring. The high-throughput satellite has a total capacity of more than 70 Gbps to provide services from direct Internet access to enterprise networks and local broadcasting.