Wikipedia
Zenit (, ; meaning Zenith) is a family of space launch vehicles designed by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau of Soviet Union, and since the early 1990s by the same design bureau but now a part of Ukraine. Zenit was built in the 1980s for two purposes: as a liquid rocket booster for the Energia rocket and, equipped with a second stage, as a stand-alone up-middle launcher greater than 7-ton payload Soyuz and smaller than 20-ton payload Proton. The last rocket family developed by the USSR, the Zenit was intended as an eventual replacement for the dated R-7 and Proton families, moreover it would employ cryogenic propellants which were safer and less toxic than the Proton's nitrogen tetroxide/UDMH mix. Moreover, Zenit was planned to take over manned spaceship launches from Soyuz, but these plans were abandoned after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Zenit-3SL is launched by the Sea Launch consortium's floating launch platform in the Pacific Ocean and Zenit-2 is launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The engines of the Zenit's first and second stages as well as the upper stage of the Zenit-3SL rocket are supplied by Russia. There are plans to use an improved Zenit-3SLB rocket for commercial launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome beginning in April 2008. This service is marketed as "Land Launch."
Zenit-3SL has launched 36 times with 32 successes, one partial success, and three failures. The first failure, the launch of a Hughes-built communications satellite owned by ICO Global Communications, occurred during the second commercial launch on March 12, 2000 and was blamed on a software error that failed to close a valve in the second stage of the rocket. The second failure occurred on January 30, 2007 when the rocket exploded on the Odyssey launch platform, seconds after engine ignition. The NSS-8 communication satellite on board was destroyed.
On September 24, 2011 Zenit-3SL launched successfully from the Odyssey launch platform under a renewed Sea Launch project with RSC Energia as the majority stakeholder. The rocket delivered the European communication satellite Atlantic Bird 7 to its planned orbit. On February 1, 2013 another Zenit-3SL failed while launching the Intelsat 27 satellite.
Zenit, meaning zenith, may refer to:
Zenit (, , Zenith) was a series of military photoreconnaissance satellites launched by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1994. To conceal their nature, all flights were given the public Kosmos designation. Over a 33 year period, over five hundred Zenits were flown making it the most numerous type of satellite in the history of spaceflight.
Zenit is a Russian (and formerly Soviet) camera brand manufactured by KMZ in the town of Krasnogorsk near Moscow since 1952 and by BelOMO in Belarus since the 1970s. The Zenit trademark is associated with 35 mm SLR cameras. Among related brands are Zorki for 35 mm rangefinder cameras, Moskva (Moscow) and Iskra for medium-format folding cameras and Horizon for panoramic cameras. In the 1960s and 1970s, they were exported by Mashpriborintorg to 74 countries.
The name is sometimes spelled Zenith in English, such as the manuals published by the UK Zenit-importer TOE. However, TOE's imported camera bodies as from 1963 retained the "Zenit" badges. The early Zorki-based models before that time were labelled "Zenith" in a handwritten style of script.
Zenit (; meaning zenith) was the All-Union Voluntary Sports Society for workers of arms industry, established in 1936. Due to reorganization of sports societies, between 1957 and 1966 physical culture collectives of Zenit were a part of VSS Trud from the Russian SFSR, and other republican sports societies. In 1966 Zenit again became a separate VSS. In the 1970s Zenit had about 1,000 large sports constructions, 13,000 sports and football grounds, more than 100 Children and Youth Sport Schools.
The name has been retained after the fall of the Soviet Union and the VSS system, notably by FC Zenit Saint Petersburg, which won the 2007 and 2010 Russian Premier League seasons, the 2007-08 UEFA Cup, and the 2008 UEFA Super Cup in association football.