State Department Issues Shipping Licenses for 2 Russia-bound Sats

摘要

The U.S. State Department has issued shipping licenses for two commercial telecommunications satellites that had been scheduled for launch this year aboard Russian Proton rockets from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome, industry officials said. The licenses to Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems and Airbus Defence and Space for the Inmarsat 5 F2 and Astra 2G satellites, respectively, would suggest that the reach of U.S. sanctions against Russia for its behavior in Ukraine has stopped short of the broader commercial space sector, at least for now. "We got our approvals the week of May 7," one industry official said of the shipping licenses. Three other industry officials confirmed that this was the case. However, the schedule for launching Inmarsat 5 F2 and Astra 2G has been thrown into doubt by a May 16 Proton launch failure. Industry officials had said in recent weeks that the U.S. sanctions are vague enough to have caused the State Department to hesitate before approving shipment of commercial satellites to Russia out of concern that the hardware might be judged to aid Russia's military capability, if only indirectly.