MOSCOW, April 08. /ITAR-TASS/. The Luch-5V and KazSat-3 satellites have been successfully delivered to the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. An official of the foreign relations department of Volga-Dnepr company told ITAR-TASS that the satellites had been delivered by the Antonov An-124-100 Ruslan plane.

“The satellites were placed in a huge container for transportation with the dimensions of more than 14 metres in length, three metres in width and about four metres in height. The total mass of the delivered cargo is 21 tonnes. The container was put on a ramp by a crane and then pulled into the cargo compartment by winches. Support equipment was transported to Baikonur together with the satellites,” the company press service said.

After the transportation of the satellites to the cosmodrome, the Ruslan plane performed a return flight to Krasnoyarsk, delivering the transportation container to the manufacturing company.

“It was necessary to prepare the plane and loading equipment exactly for the moment of the arrival of the satellites to Krasnoyarsk from the place where they were manufactured - the town of Zheleznogorsk. Exceptional concurrence of action of all the transportation participants was determined by the tight schedule of the tests ahead of the launch of the satellites,” Volga-Dnepr sources said.

The Luch-5V and KazSat-3 spacecraft are telecommunications data relay satellites. Luch-5V will become the third in a series of four satellites designed for the reception of information at flight phases out of reach from the Russian territory and its real-time relay to Russian ground-based stations. KazSat-3 is designed for the provision of various communications services in Kazakhstan. The satellites, the launch of which is scheduled for April 28, will be placed into orbit by the Proton-M carrier rocket.