Eurostar 8 spacecraft placed into arget geotransfer orbitt

Today saw a successful launch of Eurostar 8 spacecraft into its target geotransfer orbit.
The SC mass is about 4.7 tons. Nominal parameters of the target orbit are: orbital inclination of 23 degrees, minimal altitude of 4300 km (in perigee), the maximum altitude of 35786 km (in apogee).
The actual orbital insertion of the SC into its target orbit from its intermediate orbit, which had been established by Proton K launch vehicle, was performed by upper stage DM-3. The actual deviations of the target orbit parameters from the nominal values are: 20.8 km in apogee altitude (while the allowable value is 392 km); 1.5 km in perigee altitude (while the allowable value is 150 km).

The space rocket system consisting of LV Proton-K, upper stage DM-3 and SC Echostar-9 was launched from Baikonur at 09:15 Moscow Daylight-saving Time.

The flight time from lift-off to SC separation was 6 hours 36 minutes.

The spacecraft was built by Space Systems Loral (USA) under a contract with Echostar corporation (USA) and designed for direct TV broadcasting to continental USA, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto-Rico.
That was the twenty eighth commercial SC launched using a DM-type upper stage, developed and manufactured by S.P.Korolev RSC Energia.

Altogether, over the period since 1967 till now, RSC Energia specialists, in cooperation with subcontractors, made 265 launches of all modifications of D- and DM-type upper stages, including upper stages DM-SL, which have been used since 1999 for launching SC under the Sea Launch program.
Echostar-8 was launched from Baikonur under the program of a Russian/US company ILS (International Launch Services) established with participation of S.P.Korolev RSC Energia, Krunichev State Scientific and Production Space Center (Russia) and Lockheed Martin (USA).

Within this joint venture, RSC Energia is responsible for developing, building and manufacturing DM-type upper stages, including their integration with SC.