At 1400 GMT on 4 June 2016, a Rockot/Breeze KM launch vehicle was ejected from its launch pod and ignited to take the GEO-IK 2-2 spacecraft into orbit. The Russian military spacecraft is designed for the Geodysy role – that is to map the Earth’s gravitational field. There was some consternation in Canada over the launch as the rocket stage fell near to Canadian waters in the Arctic. Environmental protesters noted that the stage might have had residual amounts of poisonous hydrazine fuel aboard.
The spacecraft, in being a Russian military satellite, has been given the codename Cosmos 2517. The spacecraft was injected into a Sun-synchronous orbit of approximately 961 x 936 km at 99.3 degrees inclination (figures from Jonathan McDowell).
