MOSCOW, February 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is
planning to launch on Thursday a U.S. Telstar telecom satellite
on a Zenith carrier rocket from the Baikonur space center in
Kazakhstan, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency said.
"The launch of a Zenit-3SLB rocket with a Telstar-11N
satellite is scheduled for 9:30 p.m. Moscow time [18:30 GMT],"
the Roscosmos official said.
The Telstar 11N, built by Space Systems/Loral for the
Loral Skynet telecoms company, will provide services from 39
high-power Ku-band transponders spread across four different
geographic beams in each of North and Central America, Europe,
Africa and the maritime Atlantic Ocean Region.
The Zenit-3SLB is a modernized three-stage version of the
Zenit-3SL, which was previously used at Sea Launch's floating
platform in the Pacific Ocean.
Russia already carried out three successful space launches
this year and is planning to set a world record by conducting a
total of 39 launches in 2009 despite the global financial
crisis.
The country carried out 27 space launches in 2008 and 26
launches in 2007, becoming the world's leader in this sphere.
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