MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/. Russia’s remote sensing satellites Kanopus No. 3 and No. 4 launched and orbited on February 1 have sent their first images of the Earth’s surface, the press office of Roscosmos State Space Corporation reported on Monday.
"On February 10, the space vehicle Kanopus-V No. 4 transmitted its first image of the Earth’s surface, showing the airport of the city of Omsk," Roscosmos said.
A day earlier, Roscosmos received the first space images from the Kanopus No. 3 satellite.
The satellites Kanopus-V No. 3 and No. 4 were launched from the Vostochny spaceport aboard a Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket on February 1. Simultaneously, the carrier rocket delivered nine small satellites from various countries into orbit: four S-net hi-tech satellites (Germany), four Lemur space vehicles (USA) to gather data for the system of automatically identifying sea-going vessels and one D-Star One hi-tech satellite (also Germany).
Kanopus-V satellites are designed to monitor man-made and natural disasters, including weather emergencies, large discharges of pollutants into the atmosphere, and also to monitor agricultural activity, natural (including water and coastal) resources and land management.
The satellites weighing 465 kg are launched into sun-synchronous orbit about 510 km high. The satellites can operate for five years.
The first Kanopus-V satellite was launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on July 22, 2012.