ILS/Proton restructures
April 15, 2019
By Chris Forrester
Russia’s Proton sales and marketing will now operate under the auspices of Glavkosmos, a long-standing commercial subsidiary of Roscosmos State Corporation. Under the Glavkosmos umbrella, ILS will offer Proton in parallel with GK Launch Services, which provides its Soyuz-2 rockets.
ILS provides launch services for satellite operators and offers a complete array of services and support, from contract arrangements, mission management and on-orbit delivery. ILS markets the Proton Breeze M and Angara 1.2 launch services to commercial and government satellite operators worldwide and is a U.S. company headquartered in Reston, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.
ILS President Kirk Pysher said the company has undertaken a significantly new approach as to how the firm will operate going forward. This signals a new era for ILS for this robust, reliable vehicle that has successfully launched 418 times. ILS added that it is redoubling its commitment to serving the satellite industry with flexible, affordable launch solutions, “first and foremost by bringing pricing squarely in line with our customers’ needs.”
Pysher noted that cost savings have been achieved through benefits realized from quality improvement initiatives coupled with significantly lower production and launch site costs. These significant cost savings have been achieved through the great teamwork of Glavkosmos, ILS, Khrunichev and its team of subcontractors, under the supervision of Roscosmos State Corporation. The collaborative objective is to offer a one-stop shop for customers’ varying launch needs. By working under the Glavkosmos umbrella and with GK Launch, the company can offer a broader and more flexible set of strategic launch agreements that will provide customers with value-added options such as backup agreements for schedule assurance and multiple launch vehicle solutions for those complex projects requiring delivery of satellites to different orbits.
He also noted that ILS will broaden its commercial activities as the North American marketing unit for Glavkosmos to expand sales of equipment and services from leading enterprises of the Russian space industry.