{"id":13090,"date":"2019-07-11T18:39:14","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T10:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/four-russian-military-satellites-launched-from-plesetsk-cosmodrome\/"},"modified":"2019-07-11T18:39:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T10:39:14","slug":"four-russian-military-satellites-launched-from-plesetsk-cosmodrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/four-russian-military-satellites-launched-from-plesetsk-cosmodrome\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Russian military satellites launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fke1C25EbLs\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Four unidentified Russian military satellites rode a modified Soyuz booster into orbit Wednesday from a remote space base north of Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>The satellites lifted off at 1714 GMT (1:14 p.m. EDT) Wednesday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military launch base around 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>The launch occurred at 8:14 p.m. Moscow time.<\/p>\n<p>A Soyuz 2-1v rocket and Volga upper stage carried the four satellites into orbit for the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Russian military said in a statement. The defense ministry said payloads launched Wednesday will study the effects of the environment of space on satellites, and assist in the calibration of military tracking radars.<\/p>\n<p>The satellites were designated Kosmos 2535, 2536, 2537 and 2538 under the Russian Defense Ministry\u2019s naming scheme for military spacecraft.<\/p>\n<p>Russian officials did not publicize Wednesday\u2019s launch in advance, apart from the release of standard pre-launch airspace warning notices. The warnings suggested the Soyuz 2-1v rocket was programmed to fly north from Plesetsk, heading on a flight path that would take the satellites over Earth\u2019s poles on each orbit.<\/p>\n<p>As of Thursday morning, independent tracking information from the U.S. military was not available for four new Russian military satellites.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday\u2019s launch was the fifth flight of Russia\u2019s light-class Soyuz 2-1v booster, which uses a single liquid-fueled NK-33 first stage engine originally developed for the Soviet-era N1 moon rocket. The Soyuz 2-1v replaces the Soyuz rocket\u2019s four-nozzle core stage engine with a single-nozzle NK-33, and designers removed the four strap-on boosters that normally fly on Soyuz missions.<\/p>\n<p>Four vernier steering engines are also mounted around the kerosene-fed NK-33 engine on the Soyuz 2-1v first stage. The modified launcher\u2019s second stage is powered by an RD-0124 engine, the same type of powerplant also used on the modernized Soyuz 2-1b version of Russia\u2019s classic Soyuz rocket.<\/p>\n<p>Russian engineers kept the NK-33 engines in storage after the N1 moon rocket was canceled. Some of the NK-33 engines were exported to the United States, where they were upgraded to fly on Northrop Grumman\u2019s Antares rocket to launch supplies to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n<p>But an engine failure in 2014 prompted the Antares team to select a new powerplant for the rocket, and the Soyuz 2-1v is the only rocket currently flying with NK-33 engines.<\/p>\n<p>The Soyuz 2-1v mission Wednesday was the second launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome this year, and the ninth flight of a Russian-built satellite launcher so far in 2019.<\/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>Four unidentified Russian military satellites rode a modified Soyuz booster into orbit Wednesday from a remote space base north of Moscow. The satellites lifted off at 1714 GMT (1:14 p.m. EDT) Wednesday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military launch base around 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow. The launch occurred at 8:14 p.m. Moscow [&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":[2592,2593,2594,2595,25,257,1893,352],"class_list":["post-13090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-kosmos-2535","tag-kosmos-2536","tag-kosmos-2537","tag-kosmos-2538","tag-launch","tag-military-space","tag-plesetsk-cosmodrome","tag-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13090"}],"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=13090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}