russianspaceweb.com - Soyuz-2 launches a classified satellite, secondary payloads

home - domains - russianspaceweb.com

Soyuz-2-1b Soyuz-2 Kosmos

Goto Site

https://russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft-military-soyuz2-2024-0516.html

Site Description

Soyuz-2-1b launch on May 16, 2024 | Story by Anatoly Zak | Editor: Alain Chabot

Example Site Content

Soyuz-2 launches a classified satellite, secondary payloads Site map Site update log About this site About the author Mailbox SUPPORT THIS SITE! ADVERTISE Searching for details: The author of this page will appreciate comments, corrections and imagery related to the subject. Please contact Anatoly Zak.   Related pages: Buro 1440 INSIDER CONTENT     SUBSCRIBE! | ADVERTISE! | DONATE!   Soyuz-2 launches a classified satellite, secondary payloads Russian military personnel at Plesetsk Cosmodrome launched multiple satellites for the Ministry of Defense and several Russian developers on a Soyuz-2-1b rocket soon after midnight on May 17, 2024. Previous military launch: 2024 Feb. 9 Soyuz-2 rocket mission on May 17, 2024, at a glance: Payloads Kosmos-2576, Zorky-2M No. 4, No. 6, SITRO-AIS No. 53, 54, 55, 56, Rassvet-2 (3) Launch date 2024 May 17, 00:21:29 Moscow Time Launch vehicle Soyuz-2-1b/Fregat Launch site Plesetsk, Site 43, Pad 4 Pace of our development depends primarily on the level of support from our readers! On April 24, 2024, during visit by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to Plesetsk, the official video release showed a third stage of the Soyuz-2 launch vehicle seemingly being prepared for integration with an already assembled booster cluster of the first and second stages. A third stage for another Soyuz-2 rocket was also visible, but there was no sign of a payload section in the integration building at that point. (Normally, the payload section would first be integrated with the third stage, before the resulting upper composite would be connected to booster stages). In the first half of May 2024, Russian authorities issued warnings for sea and air traffic in the Barents and Norwegian Seas for a rocket launch planned during a period from May 16 to 26, 2024. The projected impact sites were along the ground path to a near-polar Sun-synchronous orbit, previously used by Soyuz rockets delivering Bars-M military cartography satellites. One site off the coast of the Kola Peninsula in the Barents Sea would be used to drop a payload fairing, while the second site south of Svalbard Archipelago would receive the remnants of the second stage. However, this time, another advisory was issued for an impact site in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of the Californian Coast, indicating that the third stage would be dropped there after reaching near-orbital velocity, instead of entering orbit and then reentering uncontrollably, as it had happened in previous Bars-M launches. In turn, the flight scenario leaving the third stage on a ballistic trajectory revealed that a some kind of fourth stage, such as Fregat or Volga space tugs, would be used to insert the payload into an initial orbit and, likely maneuver it further to a target orbit — another major departure from the Bars-M missions. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the launch took place on May 17, 2024, at 00:21 Moscow Time on a Soyuz-2-1b rocket with multiple satellites onboard. On May 17, 2024, the US Space Force initially catalogued a single object associated with the launch in a 436 by 451-kilometer orbit with an inclination 97.246 degrees toward the Equator. However, a total of six objects were listed soon thereafter. Around the same time, Moscow-based Sputniks company, a branch of Sitroniks Speis, announced that six of its payloads had been successfully launched and were under control of the company's ground facility. The payloads included two Zorky-2M remote-sensing spacecraft and four SITRO-AIS automated identification system satellites for tracking sea vessels. According to the company, Zorky-2M represented a 12-unit Cubesats with a mass of 18 kilograms and dimensions of 20 by 20 by 30 centimeters. They carried an imaging multi-spectral camera operating in optical and near-infrared range with a resolution of 2.5 by 2.8 meters per pixel and a swath of 14 kilometers on the Earth's surface. The AIS satellites represented three-unit cubesats, according to Sputniks. The US Space Force then added three more objects to the list, Objects G, H, and J, which could represent three military pa

Websites with similar content