{"id":12968,"date":"2019-08-31T00:28:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/russian-military-satellite-orbited-by-rockot-launcher\/"},"modified":"2019-08-31T00:28:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:28:17","slug":"russian-military-satellite-orbited-by-rockot-launcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/russian-military-satellite-orbited-by-rockot-launcher\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian military satellite orbited by Rockot launcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bQBBdkoTHek\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A geodetic surveying satellite for the Russian military successfully launched Friday aboard a Rockot booster \u2014 a modified ballistic missile \u2014 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.<\/p>\n<p>The 95-foot-tall (29-meter) Rockot launcher lifted off at 1400 GMT (10 a.m. EDT; 5 p.m. Moscow time) Friday from Plesetsk, according to a statement released by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.<\/p>\n<p>Roscosmos said the two-stage Rockot performed its launch sequence as designed, and a Breeze KM upper stage delivered its payload into the targeted orbit.<\/p>\n<p>The Rockot\u2019s two lower stages are from a decommissioned SS-19 ballistic missile, known in Russia as the UR-100N. The Rocket fired out of an above-ground launch canister at Plesetsk, a military spaceport around 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow in the&nbsp;Arkhangelsk region.<\/p>\n<p>Heading northwest from Plesetsk on a trajectory over the Arctic, the two lower liquid-fueled stages fired in succession in the first five minutes of the flight, then the Breeze KM upper stage ignited two times to reach the mission\u2019s intended orbit.<\/p>\n<p>Tracking data released by the U.S. military indicated the Breeze KM upper stage deployed its payload in a nearly circular orbit around 590 miles (950 kilometers) above Earth, at an inclination of 99.3 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n<p>The launch time and orbit achieved on Friday\u2019s mission match those of a Rockot mission in 2016, which carried the previous GEO-IK 2 geodetic satellite into space.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_40586\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-40586\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-40586\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/geoik2_file.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/geoik2_file.jpg 900w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/geoik2_file-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/geoik2_file-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/geoik2_file-678x452.jpg 678w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-40586\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">File photo of a GEO-IK 2 satellite. Credit: ISS Reshetnev<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The payload launched Friday was expected to be renamed Kosmos 2540, keeping with the Russian Defense Ministry\u2019s naming system for military spacecraft.<\/p>\n<p>The GEO-IK 2 satellites measure Earth\u2019s shape,&nbsp;gravity field, rotation and tectonic movement \u2014 information then used by the Russian military to&nbsp;aid satellite tracking, global navigation and inform the computation of missile trajectories.<\/p>\n<p>Built by the Russian satellite contractor ISS Reshetnev, the GEO-IK 2 satellites each weigh around 2,000 pounds (900 kilograms). The spacecraft is designed for a five-year mission.<\/p>\n<p>The first GEO-IK 2-series satellite launched into a lower-than-planned orbit in 2011 by a Rockot\/Breeze KM vehicle, and the second GEO-IK 2 spacecraft successfully launched in 2016. The GEO-IK 2 satellites replace an earlier generation of geodesy spacecraft launched in the 1980s and 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe GEO-IK 2 satellites will join the Russian fleet of geodetic spacecraft designed to measure variations in the Earth\u2019s gravitational field, to build a&nbsp;high-precision geodetic network in the geocentric coordinate system, as well as study continental plate motion, tides, the Earth\u2019s rotation and coordinates of poles,\u201d ISS Reshetnev said in a statement marking the previous GEO-IK 2 satellite launch in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s launch marked the 30th flight of a Rockot\/Breeze KM launch vehicle since May 2000.&nbsp;The Russian aerospace contractor Khrunichev oversees the Rockot program.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A geodetic surveying satellite for the Russian military successfully launched Friday aboard a Rockot booster \u2014 a modified ballistic missile \u2014 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. The 95-foot-tall (29-meter) Rockot launcher lifted off at 1400 GMT (10 a.m. EDT; 5 p.m. Moscow time) Friday from Plesetsk, according to a statement released by Roscosmos, the Russian space [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2408,2533,2534,2030,2535,25,257,1893],"class_list":["post-12968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-breeze-km","tag-geo-ik-2","tag-geodesy","tag-iss-reshetnev","tag-kosmos-2540","tag-launch","tag-military-space","tag-plesetsk-cosmodrome"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}