Russia's most powerful telecom satellite Yamal-601 put into geostationary orbit
MOSCOW. May 31 (Interfax) - A Proton-M rocket's Briz-M booster stage has put Russia's new telecom satellite Yamal-601 into a geostationary orbit, Roscosmos said in a statement on Friday.
"The Yamal-601 satellite has been put into a geostationary orbit," the corporation said.
"The client has taken control of the satellite," it said.
The Proton-M LV blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 8:42 p.m. Moscow time on Thursday as planned. Three stages of the rocket separated from the Briz-M and the satellite one after another within the next ten minutes. Briz-M and Yamal-601 reached a suborbital trajectory as a result.
After that, the booster unit continued to propel the satellite to a geostationary orbit with an altitude of 35,703 kilometers for nine hours and 15 minutes. The goal was achieved with five burns of the booster's engine.
Yamal-601 was built by the French division of Thales Alenia Space for the Russian satellite operator Gazprom Space Systems.
Yamal-601 is a project of the Russian federal targeted program promoting television and radio broadcast. It will be the most powerful telecom satellite of Russia with a service life of 15 years.
Yamal-601 will replace Yamal-202 in the orbital slot at 49 degrees East and will provide fixed-line communication and data transmission in the C band across a substantial part of Russia, as well as in CIS countries, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In addition, the satellite will provide communication and broadband Internet services to Russian users in the Ka band.