Baikonur almost ready for Proton-M launch with two telecom satellites

10:27, 02.11.2012 1 min read

Less than 24 hours remain before the launch of a Proton-M booster rocket with a Briz-M upper stage that will put Russia's Luch-5B and Yamal-300K satellites into orbit, the federal space agency Roscosmos's representative at the Baikonur cosmodrome told Interfax-AVN on Friday.

Final preparations for the launch set for 0104 Moscow time on November 3, have begun at Launch Pad No.81, he said.

Luch-5B is a Russian telecommunications responder satellite, developed by Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems (Zheleznogorsk in Krasnoyarsk Territory), on the basis of the Express-1000 platform. It will be the second of four satellites for the Luch multipurpose space responder system, alongside the Luch-5A, Luch-5V and Luch-4 satellites.

Yamal-300K is a medium-size, 1,640 kilogram, commercial geostationary telecommunications satellite owned by the Russian satellite operator Gazprom Space Systems.