Jun 15 2006
From The Space Library
Russia launched the Resurs DK1 satellite aboard a Soyuz-U rocket at 4:00 a.m. (EDT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The civilian Earth-observation satellite would operate for three years, the first in an upgraded series of spacecraft with improved capabilities in imaging resolution and communications. Navigating with a system based on Russia’s global navigation system Glonass, Resurs would be capable of surveying up to 700,000 square kilometers daily. Unlike previous Russian civilian remote-sensing craft, Resurs DK1 would carry an advanced communications system enabling it to quickly download recent images of natural resources, natural disasters, sea-ice conditions, and polar weather to Russian ground stations. Russian government agencies would use the images, making them available to national and international organizations, as well as private commercial customers. The satellites would have two attached instruments—Italy’s Payload for Anti-Matter Exploration and Light-Nuclei Astrophysics (PAMELA), which would monitor cosmic rays, and a Russian particle detector, which would identify probable electromagnetic precursors of earthquakes.
NASA, Spacewarn Bulletin no. 632, July 2006, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/spx632.html (accessed 6 August 2010); Stephen Clark, “Civil Remote Sensing Craft Launched by Russia,” Spaceflight Now, 16 June 2006; RIA Novosti, “Survey Satellite Launched from Baikonur,” 16 June 2006.
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