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European satellite separates from Russia’s carrier rocket

It takes about an hour and a half for the Briz-KM acceleration unit to deliver the satellite into the designated orbit

MOSCOW, October 13. /TASS/. A Briz-KM acceleration unit with Europe’s Sentinel-5P satellite separated at 12:32 Moscow time from Russia’s Rokot carrier rocket, which blasted off from the Plesetsk spaceport on Friday.

The satellite’s separation was shown during a live broadcast in the office of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Moscow.

The Briz-KM acceleration unit will continue delivering the satellite into the designated orbit. The satellite is expected to separate from the acceleration unit and reach the target orbit at 13:45 Moscow time.

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced earlier on Friday that a Rokot carrier rocket with a European satellite had blasted off from the Plesetsk space center in north Russia at 12:28 Moscow time.

A few minutes later, the Defense Ministry confirmed that the Briz-KM acceleration unit with the European Sentinel-5P Earth’s remote sensing satellite had separated from the Rokot carrier.

"The front part of the Rokot rocket comprising the Briz-KM acceleration unit and the Sentinel-5P satellite separated in the normal regime at the designated time [12:33 Moscow time] from the Rokot carrier rocket," the Defense Ministry said.

It will take about an hour and a half for the Briz-KM acceleration unit to deliver the satellite into the designated orbit.

The Rokot carrier rocket was launched at 12:28 Moscow time on October 13 by a combat team of the Space Troops of Russia’s Aerospace Force from the Plesetsk state testing cosmodrome in Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk Region.

Satellite

The Sentinel-5 Precursor will become the sixth satellite from the Sentinel family launched under the Copernicus program. The satellite will monitor the atmosphere’s chemical composition and climate change on the Earth.

Airbus is the basis producer of the Sentinel-5 Precursor. The company’s three production facilities in Stevenage (the UK), Toulouse (France) and Friedrichshafen (Germany) are involved in the development and production of satellites and their components.

The tropospheric monitoring equipment TROPOMI installed on the satellite will take the probes of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, methane and other gases with greater detail compared to previous satellites.

This spacecraft will give way in 2021 to the second-generation MetOp satellite.