Russia’s Meteor-M 2.2 meteorological satellite was launched on Friday to the final orbit with a height of around 832 kilometers (517 miles), an official representative of Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos told Sputnik.
The launch of a similar Meteor-M 2.1 satellite failed in November 2017, with the upper stage being unable to take Meteor-M 2.1 and 18 small satellites to orbits due to incorrect operation of software algorithms. All the satellites are considered lost.
“Meteor-M 2.2 satellite has been launched to orbit,” Roscosmos representative said.
Russia’s Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying Meteor-M 2.2 and 32 small satellites was launched from Vostochny spaceport at 8.42 am Moscow time (05:42 GMT). Ten minutes after the launch, Fregat upper stage with the satellites separated from the third stage of Soyuz-2.1b.
The upper stage is now set to to launch to two different orbits the secondary payload, including US, UK, German, Thai and Czech satellites, and Swedish, French, German, Estonian and Ecuadorian educational satellites, as well as Russia’s Sokrat, VDNKhA-80 and AmurSat satellites. The operation is expected to be completed by around 1.10 pm Moscow time.
(UNI)
