THE 400TH successful launch of a Cosmos booster from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on 24 January carried the US data-relay satellite, Faisat 1, into orbit, together with Sweden's 26kg Astrid science spacecraft and a national 810kg Tsikada navigation satellite.
The first commercial launch of a US satellite by Russia was conducted by Polyot Aerospace for Final Analysis of Greenbelt, Maryland, which plans to send a network of 25 more 114kg Faisat store-and-forward satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) by 2000. Final Analysis also hopes to negotiate more Cosmos launches.
The Faisat, which also carries a US Air Force technology experiment, is the first of the proposed US "Little LEO" data communications projects to be spaceborne. The others include Orbital Sciences' Orbcomm.
Orbcomm and Italy's Nuova Telespazio have set up Orbcomm Europe to be the exclusive provider of Orbcomm Satellite-based messaging over mobile data communications in Europe.
Sweden's next science satellite, the Odin, will be launched in 1997 by a Start 1 booster, marketed by Russia's Complex organisation.
Source: Flight International