And a Merry Christmas/Season's Greetings and Happy New Year from me, too! Spacetrack has started adding to its catalogue; there seem to be seven objects from this launch thus far, of which four have been listed. There is some trouble with this launch. Here is the New York Times report from earlier today: December 25, 2005 Russia Launches 3 Navigation Satellites By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:04 a.m. ET MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia launched three navigation satellites Sunday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellites, sent into orbit on a Proton-K rocket, are to join Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System, said a duty officer at Baikonur, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the press. He could not confirm a report by the Interfax news agency, citing an unnamed source at the cosmodrome, that the Russian Space Troops had been unable to establish control over two of the satellites. GLONASS is the equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS. It serves both military and civilian purposes. Developed during the 1970s, the system originally had 24 satellites, but the number had dwindled to 14 before Sunday's launch. The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Russian Space Troops spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov as saying that Russia hopes to have to the full complement of 24 satellites in the system by 2010. On 12/25/05, Kevin Fetter <kfetter@yahoo.com> wrote: > 3 glonass satellites were launched using a proton rocket, from Baikonur this morning. > > No orbital data on spactrack so far. > > To me fellow sat observers, merry christmas. > > Kevin ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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