Lunched Friday, Russian earth probe satellite contact problems solved

The communication with the Monitor-E satellite, has been restored, Alexander Borenev, press secretary of the Khrunichev Space Research Centre, told Itar-Tass on Saturday.

“The space vehicle has been placed in the calculated orbit. Communication with it has been established. At present operations are being performed, which are envisaged by the technology of keeping a satellite in orbit under control,” he added.

The Monitor-E satellite, which was launched with the help of the Rokot booster rocket off the Plesetsk cosmodrome at 22.34 on Friday, has not established communication with the ground services on the Earth, a representative of the Space Troops of Russia told Itar-Tass on Saturday.

“The command from the Earth did not reach the satellite on the sixth round. Telemetric information is not coming from the satellite,” he said.

In the opinion of specialists, there may be several reasons for the absence of contact with the satellite. “Probably, it was orientated in a wrong way, or the commands from the Earth are just not reaching it,” the expert believes, reports ITAR-TASS.

According to Mosnews, the craft will image Earth’s surface in resolutions ranging from about 25 feet in swaths about 56 miles wide to over 65 feet when the width of the image approaches 100 miles. Such color and black-and-white data is useful for a variety of applications, including mapping, land resource studies, emergency management, and the monitoring of agricultural crops and environmental damage.

Roskosmos - the Russian Space Agency - has included Monitor-E in the country’s official federal space program, giving it a 70 percent stake in the satellite’s mission. Plans are in work for follow-on craft featuring infrared, stereo, high resolution, and even radar imaging capabilities, Russian news reports say.

Friday’s launch was the 32nd space mission to reach orbit in 2005, and the first of the year for the Rockot vehicle. A commercial flight of the Rockot is planned for later this year when it will haul the European CryoSat spacecraft to its orbital perch for its duties to determine changes in ice cap thickness.

Photo From: www.petulina.euweb.cz