On May 16 a Proton rocket suffered a catastrophic loss of its cargo, an expensive ($217 million) communications satellite. The disaster meant that all Proton flights were suspended while a Failure Review Board studied the reasons behind the loss.

International Launch Services (ILS), while not being responsible for the lost Russian satellite, has suffered the delay and is about to start its own investigation into what went wrong with the rocket. ILS uses the Proton rockets for its ‘western’ commercial satellite launches.

Reports suggest that ILS will announce its own launch manifest in July, and expects to see flights return to normal from September.

ILS has bookings to launch Astra 2G, Turksat 4B, three Express satellites, and Eutelsat 9B between now and early 2015.

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