An RSM-54 Sineva missile
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Northern Fleet Helps to Forecast Earthquakes
An RSM-45 Sineva intercontinental ballistic missile with the COMPASS-2 scientific satellite was launched from the Northern Fleet’s submarine in the Barents Sea Friday night. Russian scientists hope to be able to forecast earthquakes with the help of this probe.
The Sineva missile carrying the COMPASS-2 satellite was to blast off late Wednesday night from the K-84 Ekaterinburg submarine. The K-84 arrived at the planned site on Wednesday and was ready for the start. Half an hour before the launch, a defect was detected in Ekaterinburg’s start system and the submarine had to return to the base. After the defect was eliminated, the K-84 sailed back and shot off the Sineva late Friday night.
The Complex Orbital Magneto-Plasma Autonomous Small Satellite (COMPASS-2) was created at the Makeev Design Bureau under the project of the Institute for Terrestrial Magnetism and Spread of Radio-Waves. The probe is to record anomalies of the Earth's radiation, which will make earthquakes forecasts more accurate. The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry lays great hopes on the launch, planning to set up a center to process the data from satellites of this type as another probe of this kind, COMPASS-3 is to be put into orbit later this year. Yet, scientists are still unsure how much time COMPASS-2 will spend in the orbit, since the previous satellite of the series worked only a couple of days in space in 2001 due to a technical fault.
The Russian Defense Ministry was not quite happy about the launch which was in fact a part of the program aimed to continue using RSM-54 nuclear missiles. The first launch attempt failed, so the task was not fulfilled, the military complained.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 29, 2006
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