37951 - LUCH 5A

LUCH 5A, a Russian communication satellite, was launched from Baikonur on 2011 December 11 at 11:17 UT by a Proton rocket. The craft weighed 1,150 kg. The satellite is expected to restore some space-to-ground communications capability for the Russian Space Agency. It will operate 22,300 miles above Earth to provide connections to lower-orbiting spacecraft beneath it. LUCH 5A has high-gain, steerable, and omnidirectional antennas to communicate in Ku- and S-band frequencies for routing telemetry signals, relaying commands to spacecraft and tracking rocket boosters in flight. It has a 10-year design life.

The initial orbital parameters were period = 1,436.03 minutes, apogee = 35,791.9 km, perigee = 35,778.8 km, inclination = 4.8 deg on 2012 Jan 8 at 23:32:17 UTC.

Facts in Brief

Launch Date: 2011-12-11
Launch Vehicle: Proton
Launch Site: Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), Kazakhstan
Mass: 1150.0 kg