The Western-made satellites are not allowed to be launched into orbit on Russian booster rockets, Interfax says April 28. That happened after the U.S. Commerce Department amid the unrest in Ukraine imposed sanctions on Russian purchases of the U.S.-built satellites and satellites with the American components.
Thus, the March decision on placing a hold on issuance of licenses that would authorize the export or re-export of “dual-used” items intended for both military and civilian use is in effect now. So, the U.S. banned the launch of SES’s Astra 2G craft on Proton rocket that was scheduled for June from the Russian Baikonur facility.
The launch of Inmarsat 5 F2, which was slated for this year, was cancelled as well. The Turkish Turksat 4B fell under sanctions too.
Apart from that, the sanctions are applied to the firms which intended to send up their crafts on the Russian Proton rockets from Baikonur Cosmodrome by International Launch Services, subsidiary of Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. Moreover, small-satellite owners riding as secondary passengers on Russian Soyuz and Russian-Ukrainian Dnepr also got in hot water. Previously, Canada suspended preparations for sending the M3MSat micro-satellite to Russia due to the Ukrainian crisis. M3MSat was supposed to be put into orbit as the associated load with Meteor-M No.2 spacecraft and microsatellites MKA-PN2 (Relek), Ukube-1, SkySat-2, TechDemoSat-1, AISSat-2, DX-1, Baumanets-2 and Venta-1. The rocket Soyuz-2.1b was projected to be carried out from Baikonur on June 19.
