Space

Russia's Proton-M takes U.S. telecoms satellite into orbit

RIA Novosti

06:46 15/11/2010 MOSCOW, November 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Proton-M carrier rocket took a U.S. telecommunications satellite into orbit on Monday, a spokesman for Russian space agency Roskosmos said.

It was launched at 20:29 Moscow time [16:29 GMT] Sunday from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.

"The foreign communications satellite separated from the Breeze-M booster at 5:09 Moscow time [2:09 GMT] on Monday. Therefore, Russia fulfilled its obligations to deliver a foreign communications satellite into orbit," the source said.

The contract to put the satellite into space was signed between Russian-U.S. company International Launch Services (ILS) and Canadian MSV-Mobile Satellite Ventures.

The satellite, with a commercial name SkyTerra 1, is designed to provide voice and data services in L-band.

It was manufactured by Boeing on an order from the U.S. telecoms company LightSquared, and is based on the reliable Boeing 702 Geo-Mobile platform. The satellite has a 22-meter L-band reflector for mobile terminal links complemented by a 1.5 meter Ku-band antenna.

SkyTerra 1 and its twin – SkyTerra 2 – will enable in the future the world's first commercial mobile satellite service using both space and terrestrial elements.