Russia’s military launched another reconnaissance satellite into orbit at 0942 GMT on 24 March 2016 from the Northern Russian launch site of Plesetsk. The launched Cosmos 2515 designated spacecraft is an electro-optical area surveillance stereoscopic cartography satellite using the Bars-M bus design built by TSSKB Progress. The circa 4,000kg spacecraft carries an electro-optical camera system called Karat, developed by LOMO (Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association. The spacecraft has a design life minimum of five years and operates in a sun-synchronous near polar low Earth orbit. The satellite is the second Bars-M spacecraft to be launched. The first, Cosmos 2503 was launched in February 2015.
Cosmos 2515 – a Bars-M reconnaissance satellite – is launched by Soyuz 2-1a rocket
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