Note: Payload identity and Cosmos series numbering not confirmed. The Strela (Russian: Стрела) are Soviet, then Russian, military space telecommunication satellites, in use since 1964. These satellites operate as mailboxes ("store-and-forward"): they remember the received messages and then resend them after the scheduled time, or by a command from the Earth. They can serve for up to five years. The satellites are used for transmission of encrypted messages and images. The operational constellation consists of 12 satellites in two orbital planes, spaced 90° apart. The spacecraft had a cylindrical body with a gravity-gradient boom, which was extended on-orbit to provide passive attitude stabilization. On-board storage was 12 Mbits of data, with a transmission rate of 2.4 kbit/s. The first three satellites were launched in 1964 by a Cosmos launcher. After one year of service, new and improved satellites were launched, called Strela-2. In 1970, these satellites were modernized, and became the Strela-1M and Strela-2M satellites. From 1985, these satellites will be gradually replaced by Strela-3, and then by Strela-3M from 2005. A civilian version of these satellites was created, called Goniets. Initially they were launched in groups of six on Tsyklon; when the launcher was retired, they were only launched by two on Cosmos, before Rokot was put into service and allowed the sending of triplets of Strela satellites.
Low Earth OrbitGlonass-K2 are the fourth generation of satellite design for GLONASS satellite navigation system. GLONASS is a Russian space-based navigation system comparable to the similar GPS and Galileo systems. This generation improves on accuracy, power consumption and design life. Each satellite is unpressurized and weighs 1645 kg, and has an operational lifetime of 10 years.
Medium Earth OrbitThe Kondor-FKA is a small civilian radar Earth observation satellite designed by NPO Mashinostroyeniya as a civilian counterpart to the Kondor-E satellite. The Kondor satellite features a S-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can conduct both continous swath surweys or detailed spot surveys. The swath width is 10 km. Ground resolution is 1 to 2 m in spotlight mode, 1 to 3 m in stripmap mode and 5 to 30 m in ScanSAR mode.
Sun-Synchronous OrbitIonosfera is a constellation of four ionospheric and magnetospheric research satellites developed by for Roscosmos for the project Ionozond. The satellites will operate on circular sun-synchronous orbits (SSO), at altitude of about 800 km and located in two orbital planes of two satellites each. The following science instruments are carried on the satellites: * SPER/1 Plasma and energy radiation spectrometer * SG/1 Gamma-ray spectrometer * GALS/1 Galactic cosmic ray spectrometer / 1 * LAERTES On-board Ionosonde * NBK/2 Low-frequency wave complex * ESEP Ionospheric plasma energy spectrometer * Ozonometer-TM Ozonometer * MayaK On-board radio transmitters * PES GPS-GLONASS device The launch also include a secondary payload of 53 small satellites developed by various institutions and companies in Russia and other nations (including 2 from Iran) for technology demonstration, communication and Earth observation purposes.
Sun-Synchronous OrbitNote: Payload identity uncertain. Bars-M is the second incarnation of the Bars project, which was started in the mid 1990ies to develop a successor for the Komtea class of area surveillance satellites. The original Bars project was halted in the early 2000s. In 2007, TsSKB-Progress was contracted for Bars-M, for which reportedly the Yantar-based service module was replaced by a new developed advanced service module. The Bars-M satellites feature an electro-optical camera system called Karat, which is developed and built by the Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association (LOMO), and a dual laser altimeter instrument to deliver topographic imagery, stereo images, altimeter data and high-resolution images with a ground resolution around 1 meter.
Sun-Synchronous Orbit