spacetoday.net: Zenit launches five satellites

Posted: Tue, Dec 11, 2001, 10:14 AM ET (1514 GMT)
A Zenit 2 booster successfully launches a Russian weather satellite and four other spacecraft Monday. The Zenit lifted off from Baikonur, Kazakhstan at 12:19 pm EST (1719 GMT) and placed its payload of five satellites into a 1018-km sun-synchronous orbit. The primary payload of the Zenit was Meteor-3M, a Russian weather satellite that is also carrying the American Sage-3 ozone monitoring instrument. Also flown on the Zenit were two other Russian satellites: Kompass, a geophysics spacecraft, and Reflektor, which will study orbital debris. The Zenit also placed into orbit the Maroc-Tubsat remote sensing satellite for Morocco and the Badr-B research satellite for Pakistan. The launch is the only one for the Zenit 2 this year, although two Zenit 3SL boosters were launched for the multinational Sea Launch operation.