S7 Group, the owner of Russia's S7 Airlines, agreed to buy the floating rocket platform Sea Launch from a group of investors and aims to restore its operations after a more than two-year hiatus, the family-owned company said. S7 Group co-founder Vladislav Filev described the deal as an "admission ticket" into the aerospace industry.

"Why are we doing it? Just because it's beautiful," Filev said in an interview in Moscow before heading to Guadalajara, Mexico, to sign the deal.

S7 faces significant challenges in trying to revive Sea Launch, which was created by Russian, Ukrainian, Norwegian companies and Boeing Co. of the U.S. in 1995. Its operations were suspended in 2014 amid Russia's conflict with Ukraine, which supplied Zenith rockets to the project. The business remains prone to accidents like a recent SpaceX explosion.