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Russia’s new-generation satellite to be launched from Plesetsk Feb 2015 — Defense Ministry

It's going to be this year’s first launch of a satellite from Plesetsk
 Plesetsk spaceport  ITAR-TASS/Andrei Morgunov
Plesetsk spaceport
© ITAR-TASS/Andrei Morgunov

MOSCOW, February 3. /TASS/. Russia’s new-generation spacecraft that is planned to be launched in February 2015 has been delivered to the Plesetsk spaceport in the Arkhangelsk region in north-west Russia, spokesman for Russia’s Aerospace Defense Forces Alexey Zolotukhin told TASS on Tuesday.

"Combat crew of the Plesetsk state test cosmodrome has started technological operations for unloading and transportation of the new-generation spacecraft to the technical area of the Soyuz-2 space rocket," he said.

The combat crew will conduct autonomous checks and tests of the satellite in the operations and checkout building, and then its end-to-end testing with the Soyuz-2 rocket, Zolotukhin said.

It's going to be this year’s first launch of a satellite from Plesetsk.

Zolotukhin said previously that in 2014 specialists of the Aerospace Defense Forces supported the launch of 33 spacecraft from Plesetsk spaceport and Baikonur (Kazakhstan) cosmodrome.

According to him, the Aerospace Defense Forces currently conduct 20 design projects for the creation of new types and samples of space system measurement and control equipment. They include development of a unified measurement and control system for new-generation spacecraft, an advanced telemetric data receipt and processing system, and improvement of the ground-based control of the GLONASS global satellite navigation system.