The Odyssey Rocket Launch Platform was operated by Sea Launch and was moved to a shipyard in Russia after it was sold to the S7 Group.
The Odyssey Rocket Launch Platform was operated by Sea Launch
Sea Launch was a multinational spacecraft launch service that uses a mobile maritime launch platform for equatorial launches of satellites on specialized Zenit-3SL rockets. The company was headquartered in Nyon, Switzerland but ceased operations due to technical problems and lower demands as of 2014. In 2018 Sea Launch was acquired by Russian S7 Group and in 2020 all vessels were moved to Russia and the HQ in Nyon was liquidated.
By 2013, Sea Launch had assembled and launched 31 rockets, with 3 failures and 1 partial failure. All had been communications satellites intended for geostationary transfer orbit with such customers as EchoStar, DirecTV, Eutelsat, XM Satellite Radio, PanAmSat (Intelsat), and Thuraya (YahSat).
In April 2018 the S7 Group has finally closed the transaction on its 109 million USD purchase of Sea Launch from RSC Energia and will rename Sea Launch to SL Aerospace. The company also announced that Russia’s RSC Energia and Roskosmos State Corporation and the Ukraine-based Zenit manufacturer Yuzhmash would be partners in Sea Launch, which would be managed from Moscow by the S7 KTS company, also known as S7 Space.
S7 intends to eventually conduct ocean-based satellite launches with a new vehicle called Soyuz 5. The rocket’s design allegedly takes notes from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, including a reusable first stage and modular multiple engine boosters for a heavy lift variant.
In February 2020 S7 Group moved the 46,000-ton Sea Launch’s Odyssey launch platform to Slavyanka Shipyard near Vladivostok in Russia using a Chinese cargo ship. S7 Group confirmed that no further launches were planned for the foreseeable future but will start the 470 million USD reconstruction and modernization of the platform in November 2020. The company expects to resume operations in 2023/24 with the prospective Soyuz-5 and Soyuz-6 rockets.