General Director of SRP SRC “TsSKB-Progress”, A. Kirilin met with the employees of the enterprise, summed up the results of the Samara space centre’s work in 2013 and told about tasks for the next year.

In 2013 TsSKB-Progress conducted 16 launch campaigns, 11 of them were carried out from the cosmodrome in Baikonur, 3 from Plesetsk and 2 from Guiana Space Centre (South America). All campaigns were successful; payloads were injected into the target orbits. An “Olympic” launch of Soyuz-FG rocket with Soyuz-TMA-11M spacecraft was a special one – for the first time launch vehicle made in Samara was decorated with Olympic emblems. In 2014 Rocket-Space Centre “TsSKB-Progress” is planning to carry on 22 launch campaigns.

Last year the specialists of the enterprise executed 5 launches of in-house design and production spacecraft – Earth remote sensing satellite Resurs-P, biomedical research spacecraft Bion-M, a special-purpose satellite and two small satellites named Aist.

Resurs-P No.1 is now under normal operation and shows stable work in orbit. The instrument has already taken about 6.6 million square km of the Earth surface images in panchromatic mode; it means that the received data is in great demand. The data is also obtained from another hardware of Resurs-P No.1 – wide-swath and hyper-spectral.

Resurs-DK spacecraft has already been operated in orbit for 8 years and imaged more than 78.5 million square km of territory during this period. ‘We are proud of Resurs-DK; it’s the only one satellite that operates nominally exceeding its warranty lifetime more than twice. I’m sure, it will work more for the benefit of our Motherland,’ Alexandr Nikolaevich said.

According to TsSKB-Progress’s General Director, the enterprise is working under full speed on Resurs-P No.2 and Resurs-P No.3 development in order to form orbit constellation of three Resurs-P satellites. Launch of Resurs-P No.2 is scheduled for 2014, the third Resurs-P is planned to be launched in 2015.

Bion-M, a unique biomedical research satellite, which was launched in April 2013, worked for 30 days in orbit and successfully finished its mission in May. More than 70 experiments prepared by the scientists from Russia, Ukraine, the USA, France, Italy, Germany and Republic of Korea were included in the scientific program.

Foton-M, another scientific satellite designed and developed in TsSKB-Progress, is now at final stage of assembly, its launch is scheduled for May 2014.

‘The highest point of launch campaigns 2013 was the launch of a new light-class rocket Soyuz-2-1v implemented by TsSKB-Progress from the cosmodrome in Plesetsk on December 28. The launcher with Volga upper stage functioned nominally. The payload consisting of calibration dummy spheres and prototype model of Aist small satellite was successfully put into the specified orbits. All the system (launch vehicle, upper stage and payload) was produced at our enterprise,’ A. Kirilin proudly mentioned.

‘This is a great and tremendous success. Actually, it’s the first Russian light-class rocket with liquid-propellant engines developed in the modern period,’ Alexandr Nikolaevich underlined. He congratulated employees of the enterprise on this achievement. In addition, General Director of TsSKB-Progress sincerely thanked for cooperation all the companies participated in the launch preparation.

During 2013 the representatives of TsSKB-Progress took part in the work of Roscosmos Board preparing draft proposals on superheavy-class rocket creation. The specialists of Samara space centre presented their own project of such launcher design and General Director of TsSKB-Progress stated that the centre has all the capabilities to realize it.

At the end of the meeting, A.N. Kirilin thanked employees of the space centre for the great work done in 2013 and wished them to work as hard in the next year as in the previous one and deal successfully with assigned tasks.