Survey Satellite Launched from Baikonur

MOSCOW, June 16, 2006/Satnews Daily/ — Russia successfully launched on Thursday a Soyuz-U rocket with the first Russian distant earth probing satellite of the new family Resurs-DK. According to an Itar-Tass report, the booster Soyuz-U was launched from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

According to a Mission Control report provided to Russian news agencies, the spacecraft separated from the carrier 8.5 minutes after the launch.

The Resurs-DK satellite is designed to receive and transmit prompt data on information for Earth natural resources study, data on ecology and emergency, sea surface status, ice situation, meteorological conditions in Earth polar regions, as well as to support digital data exchange between ground users.

Reports say the satellite will be continuously oriented towards the Earth in order to fulfill this program of Earth surface observation. The additional German Pamela magnet spectrometer, designed to register the fluxes of charged particles and non-stationary phenomena in cosmic ray research, is also installed on the upward side of the satellite.

The Pamela space spectrometer, which was designed under the RIM-Pamela Russian-Italian project involves German and Swedish scientists. The gadget will study galactic emissions, primarily positrons and anti-protons, which carry information about dark matter’s nature.

The spacecraft is also capable of surveying up to 700,000 square kilometers daily, and its navigation is based on Russia's global navigation satellite system Glonass. Resurs-DK will be operable for three years.