A major Russian space company has started developing a new generation of communication satellites that will provide telephone and radio broadcast communications for the oil-rich regions of Russia.
RKK Energia, a primary manufacturer of Russian piloted spacecraft, announced that it signed an agreement with a joint-stock company called Gaskom to provide two pairs of Yamal 200 satellites.
A pair of Yamal satellites
The birds are slated to primarily serve eastern regions of Russia. They will succeed a
previous generation of spacecraft known as Yamal 100, also developed by RKK Energia for Gaskom.
RKK Energia and the Russian petroleum-industry giant, called Gasprom (a Russian acronym for "gas industry"), established Gaskom with the purpose of providing communications in eastern Russia and Siberia, with the top priority being service to oil-rich remote areas, home of many Gasprom subsidiaries.
Gaskom took responsibility for operating the Yamal satellites and rents their communications channels to potential users.
Last September, a
Proton rocket boosted a pair of Yamal 100-series satellites into orbit; however, one of the spacecraft, Yamal 101, failed to respond to commands from ground-control stations and was declared a total loss. Yamal 102, however, successfully reached orbit.
According to Anatoly Vovk, a leading engineer in the Yamal project, the failure of the electrical system on the spacecraft was the most probable cause of the Yamal 101 failure. Vovk said that a number of design changes had been implemented to avoid the problem in the follow-on satellites.
On July 24, 2000, RKK Energia signed a contract with Gaskom to build four new Yamal 200-series satellites, which had been under development for some time.
They will offer from one and a half to two times the communications capacity of their predecessors, Vovk said.
The first pair of Yamal 200s is expected to ride a single Proton rocket into orbit in the summer of 2002; the second two are expected to follow about a year later.
After attaining orbit, one of the pair will be
positioned in a geosynchronous orbit 90 degrees east longitude above the equator, where it will replace the Yamal 102.
The second Yamal 200 will be posted at a longitudinal position of 49 degrees east -- the point originally intended for the lost Yamal 101 satellite.
Yamal communication satellites are the first to be built by RKK Energia in almost 30 years. The company, widely known as the operator of the
Mir space station, pioneered the design of satellite-communications technology in the former Soviet Union in the mid 1960s. However, choosing to concentrate on piloted spaceflight, it passed the program on to a company called NPO-PM in Zheleznogorsk (Siberia).
Economic problems in the post-Soviet era have prompted RKK Energia to revisit satellite communications -- a potential lifesaver for the cash-starved company.
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