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| Russia launches telecoms satellite for Angola | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 27 Dec 2017, 03:25 AM (93 Views) | |
| skibboy | 27 Dec 2017, 03:25 AM Post #1 |
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26 December 2017 Russia launches telecoms satellite for Angola ![]() © AFP/File | The Angosat project was agreed by Russia and Angola in 2009 and includes the satellite, its launch, and on-ground infrastructure in a suburb of the capital Luanda MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia on Tuesday launched a rocket carrying Angosat-1, the first national telecoms satellite for Angola, from its Baikonur space pad, with rare use of a rocket from Ukraine despite collapsed ties between the two nations. Live footage aired by Roscosmos space corporation showed the spacecraft take off into the night from the freezing launch pad in Kazakhstan. It reached initial orbit shortly after. The Zenit-2SB rocket carrying Angosat to orbit was supplied by Ukrainian maker Yuzhmash, making the launch a rare joint project between the two countries since 2014, when Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula. The Angosat project was agreed by Russia and Angola in 2009 and includes the satellite, its launch, and on-ground infrastructure in a suburb of the capital Luanda. The approximately $280-million project has been financed with a credit from Russia's state banks. The satellite is designed for a 15-year mission to boost satellite communications, Internet access, radio and TV service. Around 50 Angolan aerospace engineers trained around the globe, including in Brazil, China, Japan and Russia, will oversee the functioning of the satellite from a control centre built near Luanda. The launch was initially scheduled for the summer but had been pushed back several times due to delays. Russia initially wanted to use its new Angara rocket to launch the satellite but opted for the Zenit rocket instead, which is built by Ukrainian contractor Yuzhmash. The project went ahead despite space cooperation between Russia and Ukraine suspended following the annexation of Crimea and the ongoing conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Angola, which along with Nigeria, is one of Africa's top oil producers, but many of its citizens are mired in poverty. Source: .com
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| skibboy | 28 Dec 2017, 01:52 AM Post #2 |
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27 December 2017 Russia loses contact with Angolan satellite ![]() © Roscosmos space agency/AFP / by Olga ROTENBERG, Anna SMOLCHENKO | The Russian space agency Roscosmos said earlier that the satellite had been successfully launched and reached orbit MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia has lost contact with Angola's first national telecoms satellite launched from the Baikonur space pad, its maker said Wednesday -- a fresh embarrassment for Moscow's once proud space industry. The incident involving the Russian-made Angosat-1 followed a similar one in November when Russia lost contact with a weather satellite launched from a new cosmodrome in the country's far east. Energia, Russia's top spacecraft maker which produced the satellite for Angola, said it had reached orbit and established communication according to plan but "after a while it had stopped sending telemetry" data. "Energia specialists are analysing telemetry at their disposal," the company said in a statement, adding it was working to re-establish contact. The reason for the loss of contact was not given. Earlier Wednesday a source in the space industry told AFP that contact with the satellite had "temporarily" been lost. The source called it a "rather common situation." Energia said similar incidents had happened before with satellites in other countries including the United States and Kazakhstan. In 2006, NASA reestablished communication with a satellite nearly two years after losing contact with the spacecraft. - 'Wait 24 hours' - Sources at the Angolan space agency said that it would be premature to comment on the apparent communication breakdown. "It's correct that after the launch there was a (communications) disconnect," Da Costa N'ganga, marketing director at Infrasat, a company in Angola overseeing the satellite project, told AFP. "The nature of the technology means that we will need to wait 24 hours to know for sure what has happened," he added. The satellite -- financed by a loan from Russia -- was meant to boost telecommunications in one of Africa's top oil producers. Russia and Angola agreed to pursue the approximately $280 million project --- which includes the satellite, its launch, and on-ground infrastructure in a suburb of the capital Luanda -- in 2009. The funding for the project was agreed in 2009, during a visit to Angola by Dmitry Medvedev, Russian president at the time. The satellite was produced by Energia using a "number of innovative solutions," the Russian space agency said. The satellite was designed for a 15-year mission to boost satellite communications, internet access and radio and TV services. Around 50 Angolan aerospace engineers trained around the globe were meant to oversee the functioning of the satellite from a control centre built near Luanda. The Zenit-2SB rocket carrying Angosat to orbit was supplied by Ukrainian maker Yuzhmash. That made the launch a rare joint project between Russia and Ukraine, after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in 2014. Russia initially wanted to use its new Angara rocket to launch the satellite but opted for the Zenit rocket. The launch had been pushed back several times due to delays. - 'New client' - "It is too early to bury the satellite," said space expert Vitaly Yegorov. "But the incident with Angosat is bad because Angola is a new client," he added, noting that Russia was hoping for more such contracts with developing countries. "They had waited for this launch for many years," he said, referring to Angola. "This case may affect other developing countries interested in working with Russia." Yegorov suggested that the satellite might have been damaged due to long storage on Earth. In late November Russia lost contact with its Meteor-M weather satellite after its launch from the new Vostochny cosmodrome in the far east -- only the second such launch from the new spaceport. Apart from the weather satellite, the rocket carried 18 payloads from institutions and companies in Canada, the United States, Japan, Germany, Sweden and Norway. In October, Russia successfully launched from the northern cosmodrome of Plesetsk a European satellite dedicated to monitoring the Earth's atmosphere. Sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first sputnik satellite four years earlier are among key accomplishments of the Soviet space programme and remain a major source of national pride in Russia. by Olga ROTENBERG, Anna SMOLCHENKO Source: .com
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| skibboy | 29 Dec 2017, 01:32 AM Post #3 |
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Failed satellite programmed with 'wrong co-ordinates' 28 December 2017 ![]() The rocket carrying the satellite and other equipment launched from Vostochny cosmodrome The loss of a multi-million pound weather mapping satellite was due to programming errors, the Russian deputy prime minister has said. Dmitry Rogozin said Meteor-M had been programmed for take-off from a different space station. Speaking to Russian state TV, he blamed "human error". "The rocket was programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur," he told the Rossyia 24 TV channel. In fact the rocket was actually taking off from new base Vostochny, in the east of the country. It contained eighteen smaller satellites belonging to research and commercial companies from Russia, Norway, Sweden, the US, Canada, Germany and Japan. Russian space agency Roscosmos said last month that it had lost contact with the weather satellite, which was worth 2.6 billion rubles ($58m, £43m). Russia launched its first satellite from Vostochny in April last year, after delays and massive costs overruns. That launch also proved embarrassing when a technical problem forced it to be delayed by a day, in the presence of president Vladimir Putin. Source: .com
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| skibboy | 30 Dec 2017, 12:36 AM Post #4 |
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Contact made with 'missing' Angolan satellite 29 December 2017 ![]() Launched on 26 December, Angosat-1 will improve TV, radio and net communications in Angola Russian scientists have restored communications with a satellite days after they lost contact with it. Launched on 26 December, Angosat-1 will boost mobile and net communications in Angola as well as broadcast radio and TV shows. Soon after launch, Russian ground control staff said they were no longer receiving data from the spacecraft. It comes soon after Russia revealed "programming errors" led to the loss of another multi-million pound satellite. Launch error The launch of Angosat-1 was the culmination of a project started in 2009 and was the first communications satellite built for Angola. The development and launch of the satellite cost more than 286m euros (£253m). The development and launch of the satellite was a source of national pride for Angola which said it would also use it to aid telemedicine and other development projects. The satellite is expected to have a working life of about 15 years. A statement released by the Russian Energia rocket and space corporation said it started receiving telemetry data from Angosat-1 early on 29 December. It gave no information about why communication with the satellite was interrupted for two days during the critical time it settled into its final orbital position and deployed solar panels. "All parameters of the spacecraft systems are normal," it said in its statement. The near loss of the satellite is another embarrassment for the Russian space industry and comes just days after it admitted "human error" was behind the loss of a weather satellite. The Meteor-M 2-1 satellite was launched in November and was designed to monitor weather patterns, the ozone layer, ocean surface temperatures and other meteorological influences. It was launched from the Vostochny space portal on 28 November. However, the satellite was lost because it was programmed to lift-off from the Baikonur launch pad. The weather satellite and 18 others travelling on the same rocket were also lost. Russia said it had begun an investigation into the loss of Meteor and the problems contacting Angosat-1. Source: .com
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9:16 AM Jul 11