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Russia to launch Arctic monitoring satellite on February 28

The satellite will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and delivered into a highly elliptical orbit by a Soyuz-2 carrier rocket and a Fregat booster

MOSCOW, February 19. /TASS/. The launch of an Arktika-M Arctic monitoring satellite from the Baikonur spaceport is scheduled for February 28, Deputy Chief Designer of the Lavochkin Research and Production Association for General Designing Ivan Moskatinyev said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV Channel on Friday.

"It [the launch of the Arktika-M] is planned for February 28," he said.

The satellite will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and delivered into a highly elliptical orbit by a Soyuz-2 carrier rocket and a Fregat booster, he specified.

Russia’s Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin earlier said that the space agency planned to launch the first Arktika-M satellite in February 2021. As Rogozin said, Roscosmos agreed with Russia’s Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Roshydromet) to explore the possibilities so that the first two Arktika-M satellites "should not become the sole space vehicles."

These satellites will be able to transmit overview images of the Earth’s northern polar region and the adjacent areas at least every 15-30 minutes.

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