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Three Dnepr launches due in 2015 despite program suspension

The Dnepr rocket is to orbit South Korea's Kompsat-3A satellite in March

Dnepr carrier rocket ITAR-TASS/Sergey Kazak

Dnepr carrier rocket

© ITAR-TASS/Sergey Kazak

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Russian space agency suspends Dnepr carrier rocket project

MOSCOW, February 3./TASS/. The Cosmotras international program will filfill it contract obligations with regard to launches of the Dnepr carrier rockets with foreign-owned spacecraft, the program's CEO Alexander Serkin told TASS on Tuesday.

Serkin said preparations are being made for launching South Korea's Kompsat-3A satellite that is due in March. According to him, two more launches are planned this year, and the program's partners have nothing to fear as all obligations will be met.

Russia's space agency on Monday reported that the launches of the Russian-Ukrainian conversion-based Dnepr carrier rocket within the Cosmotras international program had been suspended.

Dnepr is a three-stage liquid propellant rocket. Its first and second stages are standard stages of the inter-continental ballistic rocket RS-20 (SS-18 Satan). The Cosmotras company is responsible for converting the RS-20B rockets originally developed in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, into the Dnepr space rocket.

It is launched either from the Baikonur space site in Kazakhstan or from the Yasny space facility in the Orenburg region in the Urals.

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Russian carrier rockets: from transporting astronauts to commercial launches

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