International Launch Services (ILS) President Mark Albrecht told SATELLITE TODAY that the launch provider has high hopes for gaining an increasing share of orders in the U.S. government arena. “We estimate that the U.S. government [orders] in the intermediate-to-heavy range about 10 satellites a year. We currently compete with the Boeing Delta 4 for those launches. We anticipate in the long-run, we will have about half of those,” Albrecht said.

ILS also announced Tuesday that it has set April 29 for its first Proton rocket launch of the year from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying the AMC-9 communications satellite for SES Americom.

An exclusive in-depth interview with ILS president Mark Albrecht can be found in the March 26 issue of Interspace. For information about subscriber to Interspace and other PBI Media satellite newsletters, check out our Website at https://www.satellitetoday.com.