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Russia Decommissions and Deorbits Military Satellite

By Annamarie Nyirady | January 10, 2019
Photo: Ruslan Shamukov/TASS

Photo: Ruslan Shamukov/TASS

Russia’s Aerospace Force Command revealed that the Russian Kosmos-2430 military satellite was deorbited Jan. 5, then burned up over the Atlantic Ocean. The satellite was excluded from the orbital grouping in 2012.

“The Russian Kosmos-2430 military satellite was deorbited in a planned manner at 09:48 Moscow time on January 5. The satellite fully burnt up in the dense layers of the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of about 100 kilometers. The on-duty teams of the Russian Aerospace Force’s Space Troops controlled the satellite’s deorbiting at all the trajectory sections,” the Command said in a statement.

“The space vehicle was launched in 2007 and in 2012 it was excluded from the orbital grouping of the Russian Federation after using up its potential,” the statement said.The Russian Kosmos-2430 satellite was part of Russia’s Oko missile attack early warning system. The satellite was delivered into orbit by the Molniya-M carrier rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in north Russia on Oct. 23, 2007 to monitor the launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles from U.S. territory.