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Rockot Launches 3 Russian Gonets-D1M Satellites Successfully
On September 11, 2013 at 23.23 hrs UTC, a Rockot launcher successfully deployed 3 Russian government Gonets-D1M satellites into an orbit of about 1500 km altitude and 82.5 degrees inclination from the designated Rockot launch site Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
This was the eighth launch of a Rockot with the Breeze-KM upper stage for the Russian government (“Federal Launch”) since 2005 and the second such launch of a Rockot in 2013.
In addition, Eurockot has performed a total of 10 launches of Earth observation, scientific and communication satellites for international customers since and will continue with the simultaneous launch of the three Swarm spacecraft for the European Space Agency (ESA) scheduled for November 2013.
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Russia has orbited three communications satellites, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday.
“The Rokot carrier rocket, launched today at 03:23 a.m. Moscow Time [23:23 GMT Wednesday] from the Plesetsk state space launch site, successfully put three Gonets-M communications satellites into the final orbit in due time,” Col. Alexei Zolotukhin said.
The launch followed a nine-month suspension due to attempts to fix a glitch in the rocket’s booster, Zolotukhin said Wednesday.
All launches of Rokots were suspended in January after the rocket’s Briz-KM booster failed to deliver three military satellites into their designated orbits, resulting in the loss of one of the satellites.
© RIA Novosti.
The light payload Rokot launch vehicle
The light-class Rokot launch vehicle is a modified version of the Russian RS-18 (SS-19 Stiletto) intercontinental ballistic missile. It uses the two original lower stages of the ICBM, in conjunction with an upper-stage block containing the Briz-KM booster and space-bound payloads.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, prior to the current launch, a total of 16 Rokot launches were carried out from the Plesetsk site since the first launch on May 16, 2000.
The Gonets-M satellites will be part of Russia’s low-orbit grouping of telecoms satellites designed to provide communications services for remote areas of Russia.
Before today’s blastoff, the grouping consisted of three Gonets-M and two Gonets-D1 satellites.
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Quelle: EUROCKOT
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