Russia added one other piece to its GLONASS satellite-navigation community on Monday (Nov. 28).
A Soyuz rocket rocket topped with a GLONASS-M satellite lifted off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwestern Russia Monday at 10:17 a.m. EST (1517 GMT; 6:17 p.m. Moscow time).
The spacecraft was efficiently delivered to its goal orbit and has acquired the designation Cosmos 2564, Roscosmos, Russia’s federal space company, announced via Telegram (opens in new tab) shortly after the launch.
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GLONASS is a satellite-navigation community, Russia’s equal of the US’ Global Positioning System (GPS), China’s Beidou and Europe’s Galileo.
The satellite that went up on the Soyuz Monday was apparently the 61st and last spacecraft within the GLONASS-M line, according to Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com (opens in new tab). It is going to function from a round orbit about 12,000 miles (19,000 kilometers) above Earth, Zak wrote.
GLONASS-M is a venerable line; the primary spacecraft within the sequence launched in 2003. Russia is transitioning to newer variants such because the GLONASS-Okay, which debuted in 2011.
The previous few months have been busy for Roscosmos and Russia’s bigger space trade. The nation has launched eight orbital missions since Oct. 10, and it despatched two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on Sept. 21.
All of this motion is going on in opposition to the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which started in February. The invasion has price Russia a few of its longstanding space partnerships; Soyuz rockets not fly out of Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, for instance, and the European Area Company has ended cooperation with Russia on its life-hunting ExoMars rover, named Rosalind Franklin. Russia had been tapped to contribute a touchdown platform and a rocket for the mission.
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