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Rocket brings 3 Russian military-purpose satellites on orbit

The satellites were given the numbers Kosmos-2488, Kosmos-2489 and Kosmos-2490

© ITAR-TASS/Andrey Morgounov

MOSCOW, December 25, 8:13 /ITAR-TASS/. The rocket Rokot has brought three Russian military-purpose satellites on the orbit. The satellites were given the numbers Kosmos-2488, Kosmos-2489 and Kosmos-2490, representative of the press service of the Russian Defence Ministry and the Aerospace Defence Troops Colonel Dmitry Zenin told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.

“The satellites were successfully brought on the designated orbit at the scheduled time at 06:16 Moscow time (02:16 GMT) and were placed under control of the ground computerised control centre of the Russian Defence Ministry, which will steer them during the orbital mission,” he said.

The launch vehicle Rokot with the upper stage rocket Briz-KM and three military-purpose satellites was launched at 04:31 Moscow time (00:31 GMT) from the Plesetsk spaceport on Wednesday. The rocket was placed under monitoring three minutes later at 04:34 Moscow time (00:34 GMT) by the ground facilities of the Titov main experimental space centre.

The launch was made under common command of Commander of the Aerospace Defence Troops Aleksander Golovko. The ground facilities of the Aerospace Defence Troops were controlling the launch and the flight of the booster.

The light rocket Rokot was created under the conversion programme on the basis of decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missile RS-18. The Khrunichev state research-and-production space centre produces the rockets of this type.

Rokot is made of three stages and the cone. First two stages are the upper stages of the strategic missile RS-18 and the upper stage rocket Briz-KM is used as the third stage.

The first launch of the rocket Rokot was made from the spaceport Plesetsk on May 16, 2000. Seventeen launches of the rockets of this type were made from the Russian northern spaceport up to now.

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