Russia plunge one of its Soyuz roquette the other day , but no one knows what was on plank , in an outstandingly secret mission .
The launching took spot from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia at 2.04pm EDT ( 7.04pm BST ) on Friday , June 23 . Normally , Russia is pretty receptive about its launch . This time around , we do n’t know what it was up to .
The roquette , a Soyuz 2 - 1v , reportedly sent an unknown payload into reach about 660 klick ( 410 miles ) above Earth . Here it ’s on an almost a diametrical orbit , something commonly used for watching satellites . This roquette is a slightly smaller version of Russia ’s regular Soyuz launcher .
Spaceflight Nownotes the mission , called Kosmos 2519 , “ might be the first of several ‘ 14F150 Napryazhenie ’ geodetic satellite designed to make extremely accurate measurements of Earth ’s soma and gravitative field of operation . ” This data can supposedly be used by ballistic missile direction estimator , which might be why this is fairly hush still .
NASASpaceflight.com(not affiliated with NASA ) said this could have been an alternate type of geodesy artificial satellite , namely the GEO - IK-2 . If dead on target , this would suggest Russia has shifted some of its military launches from Rokot Eruca vesicaria sativa to this Soyuz vehicle .
“ Geodesy is a outgrowth of science and maths occupy with measuring the physical belongings of Earth , ” they say . “ In a military context , infer the properties of Earth – and especially its gravitational field , allows missile counseling and place systems to be refine for improved truth . ”
The Russian Defense Ministry , despite putting out a statement confirm the launching , did not give any details about the payload . However , US military trailing data was capable to discover the aforesaid orbital parameters of the satellite .
Pilots were only given a couple of sidereal day warning about the launching , show how closelipped it was . They were secern to detain out of the launch area and also the dip zona , as the expendable parts of the rocket engine return to Earth .
accord toRussianspaceweb , meanwhile , there were a routine of issues with the launching that almost saw it check . Personnel raced around the clock to get it ready , avoiding the possibility of delay it from June 23 to June 25 .
Russia is not alone in performing a tightlipped launch . For the last few year , the US has been sending its mysterious X-37B space plane on unconstipated missions into orbit , some lasting more than a year . We do n’t know what the X-37B was doing up there or what the goal of the program is .
