Author Topic: Soyuz-2.1b - Lotos-S1#7 (Kosmos 2570) - Plesetsk - Oct 27, 2023 (06:04 UTC)  (Read 16238 times)

Offline Satori

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A launch is schedule for Plesetsk between October 27 and November 15 using a Soyuz-2 type launch vehicle...

https://twitter.com/nicolas_pillet/status/1714933890081542574
« Last Edit: 10/27/2023 04:48 pm by Galactic Penguin SST »

Offline B. Hendrickx

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Impact zones also announced for the Komi Republic:

https://komiinform.ru/news/256965

According to this announcement, launch is set for October 27 with back-up opportunities on October 28, November 2, 3, 8, 9, 14, 15.

These impact zones are for launches into 67° inclination orbits. The most likely payload is another Lotos-S ELINT satellite (14F145 N°808). Another possibility is the second Neitron (14F01-2), if that is still planned to be launched.


Offline Alter Sachse

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For Neitron, the impact zone was in the Yamalo-Nenetsk region.
For Lotos it was the Komi republic.

So a Lotos-satellite is a better option.
« Last Edit: 10/20/2023 01:35 pm by Alter Sachse »
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Offline B. Hendrickx

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For Neitron, the impact zone was in the Yamalo-Nenetsk region.
For Lotos it was the Komi republic.

So a Lotos-satellite is a better option.

Yamalo-Nenetsk was also announced for the upcoming launch. See the first post in this thread: the impact zones given in the tweet are in the Yamalo-Nenetsk region, although it is not mentioned by name. Actually, it's not possible to distinguish between Neitron and Lotos based on the impact zones. For launches into 67° orbits, the Komi Republic is the impact zone for the first stage and Yamalo-Nenetsk for the second stage.

What does point to a Lotos launch are the three back-to-back launch windows separated by several days. Something similar was seen for the latest Lotos launch (Kosmos-2565) in late November last year (two back-to-back launch windows separated by several days). These windows are likely tied to the orbits of the operational Lotos satellites. There are now three of them (Kosmos-2549, 2554 and 2565), which orbit the Earth in three separate planes spaced about 120° apart.

Offline Galactic Penguin SST

Probable NOTAM for closing of air routes for this - the general direction of the closure locations and the dates match with the reports above. Daily window is 04:00 - 08:00 UTC.


Q2846/23 NOTAMN
Q) ULLL/QARLC/IV/NBO/E/055/540/6509N05352E208
A) ULLL B) 2310270400 C) 2311030800
D) OCT 27 28 NOV 02 03 0400-0800
E) ATS RTE SEGMENTS CLSD:
M131 NAKIR-ROGIS FL175-FL540,
N746 ATGOR-SUBEP FL265-FL540,
P35  LESHUKONSKOYE VORDME(LKN)-ABOKI FL055-FL540,
T754 BILMI-GIGES FL055-FL540,
T761 AMEDO-ROGIS FL275-FL540,
T761 SUBEP-BILMI FL275-FL540,
T765 LIDLA-NIKDI FL055-FL540,
T793 BILMI-ATGOR FL055-FL540,
T821 BILMI-NAREK FL245-FL540,
W152 BILMI-PERAG FL055-FL325.
F) FL055  G) FL540


Q2874/23 NOTAMN
Q) ULLL/QRTCA/IV/BO/W/000/050/6511N05008E110
A) ULLL B) 2310270400 C) 2311030800
D) OCT 27 28 NOV 02 03 0400-0800
E) AIRSPACE CLSD AS FLW:
1. AREA: 645700N0474000E-643300N0480000E-641600N0462600E-
         643700N0461000E-645700N0474000E
2. AREA: 660100N0540500E-653700N0540500E-652300N0525000E-
         654900N0522700E-660100N0540500E.
F) SFC  G) 1500M AMSL
« Last Edit: 10/23/2023 01:01 pm by Galactic Penguin SST »
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Offline B. Hendrickx

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If this is indeed another Lotos-S satellite, one thing to look out for is whether it carries a subsatellite like its predecessor Kosmos-2565 (which released Kosmos-2566 days several days after launch). The first clue that Kosmos-2565 carried a passenger came in the Ministry of Defense's launch announcement, which talked about satellites (plural) having been placed into orbit by the Soyuz-2 rocket. The subsatellite was presumably installed on an adapter that can be seen on top of a Lotos-S model displayed at a military exhibition last summer.

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Any launch news?
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Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Any launch news?

I couldn't find any.
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Offline Galactic Penguin SST

Liftoff confirmed by their MoD. No launch time given so far but confirms that a Soyuz-2.1b was used.
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Offline B. Hendrickx

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The launch announcement mentions satellites (plural) launched by the Soyuz rocket. So it looks like another Lotos with a subsatellite. That should be released from Lotos in the coming days.

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Liftoff confirmed by their MoD. No launch time given so far but confirms that a Soyuz-2.1b was used.

Translation.

"The Aerospace Forces launched the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle from the Plesetsk cosmodrome

On October 27, 2023, a combat crew of the Space Forces of the Aerospace Forces launched a Soyuz-2.1b medium-class launch vehicle with spacecraft from the Plesetsk cosmodrome (Arkhangelsk Region) in the interests of the Russian Ministry of Defense."
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline Alter Sachse

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DeepL does not translate it clearly:
spacecraft/spacecrafts.
 :-\
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Offline input~2

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2023-165A/58148 in 239 x 900 km x 67.14°
2023-165B/58149 in 239 x 879 km x 67.14°

Offline B. Hendrickx

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DeepL does not translate it clearly:
spacecraft/spacecrafts.
 :-\

It's plural in Russian. Same as in the announcement of the launch of Kosmos-2565 last year. We will almost certainly see the release of a subsatellite after Lotos circularizes its orbit. 

Offline Satori

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The Russian Ministry of Defense organized an excursion for students of three Suvorov military schools to the northernmost cosmodrome...

https://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12483081@egNews

So, I suppose that this is the Soyuz-2.1b that was launched today.

Offline Galactic Penguin SST

The Russian Ministry of Defense organized an excursion for students of three Suvorov military schools to the northernmost cosmodrome...

https://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12483081@egNews

So, I suppose that this is the Soyuz-2.1b that was launched today.

The square base, red-white lightning towers would show this to be launching from Site 43/3.
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Offline Alter Sachse

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"My estimate of the launch time, based on Space Force tracking, is 0605 UTC Oct  27."

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1717925911742292333

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Offline Alter Sachse

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"My estimate of the launch time, based on Space Force tracking, is 0605 UTC Oct  27."

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1717925911742292333
NK:09:04:43 = 06:04:43
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Offline Alter Sachse

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Higher resolution
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Offline Satori

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From the previous video...

Offline Bean Kenobi

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From the previous video...

Satori, why are you naming these pictures "Cosmos 2579" please ? Isn't it 2570 ?  ???
« Last Edit: 10/27/2023 07:20 pm by Bean Kenobi »

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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https://twitter.com/tskelso/status/1717974274529702205

Quote
CelesTrak has GP data for 2 objects from the launch (2023-165) of COSMOS 2570 atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Oct 27 at ~0605 UTC: russianspaceweb.com/lotos-s1-808.h…. Data for the launch can be found at: https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/table.php?INTDES=2023-165.

Offline Alter Sachse

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Yes should be Kosmos 2570.
One day you're a hero  next day you're a clown  there's nothing that is in between
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Offline Satori

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From the previous video...

Satori, why are you naming these pictures "Cosmos 2579" please ? Isn't it 2570 ?  ???

My error, yes 2570.

Offline B. Hendrickx

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Yes should be Kosmos 2570.

Note that there has been no official confirmation from the Russian Ministry of Defense that the satellite is named Kosmos-2570. That will probably have to wait until the satellite is registered with the UN. For some reason, the same happened with the previous Lotos satellite (Kosmos-2565) last year.

The Two-Line Elements for Kosmos-2570 show that it has opened up a new orbital plane in the Lotos-S constellation, which now consists of four operational satellites (Kosmos-2549, 2554, 2565 and 2570). The three earlier satellites are in planes separated by about 120°. Kosmos-2570 has been placed into a plane that is about halfway between that of Kosmos-2554 and 2549. One can assume that the next one will occupy a fifth plane halfway between either Kosmos-2549 and Kosmos-2565 or Kosmos-2565 and Kosmos-2554, at least if all four are still operational by that time.

That next Lotos will be the last of a batch of four (serial numbers 806 to 809) ordered by the Ministry of Defense in 2017. According to press reports, the MoD signed a contract for the delivery of more Lotos satellites during the Army 2022 exhibition in August last year, but it is unknown how many were ordered and when they will be ready to fly. Meanwhile, it looks like the Lotos satellites will not be joined any time soon by a second Pion-NKS satellite, the other member of the Liana system. A press report in November last year said that no final decision had yet been made to go ahead with the construction of the second Pion.

The fact that more Lotos satellites have been ordered may indicate that the next-generation low-orbit ELINT system (“Akvarel”) has been either indefinitely delayed or canceled altogether. Nothing has been heard of it for many years. Akvarel was assigned to ISS Reshetnev back in 2014.

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« Last Edit: 10/29/2023 09:38 am by catdlr »
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Offline B. Hendrickx

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The expected Object C has appeared in an 893x914 km orbit. Object A is still shown to be in a 245x899 km orbit, but that data hasn’t been updated for more than two days.

Offline Alter Sachse

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Current data:
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Offline B. Hendrickx

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Lotos and its subsatellite will most likely be officially registered with the UN as Kosmos-2570 and Kosmos-2571 in the coming weeks. The same happened after the Lotos launch late last year (Kosmos-2565/2566).

During that mission, Object C split into two parts about three weeks after launch, so we may see something like that again this time around. If the subsatellite and its adapter separate from Lotos together, this could be the moment when the subsatellite is ejected from the adapter. But one obvious question is why it would take so long for this to happen, so this may not be the most satisfactory explanation for that event.

So far the purpose of these subsatellites cannot be identified, but here's some (hopefully educated) speculation from the Kosmos-2565 thread:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=57749.40

Quote
So far, the purpose of the subsatellite remains open to speculation. One possibility is that it is a product of the TsNIRTI institute in Moscow, which is the prime contractor for Lotos-S and builds its electronic intelligence payload (the overall design of the satellite is in the hands of KB Arsenal and it is integrated at the Arsenal Machine Building Factory).  In recent years, TsNIRTI has published several articles on the possibility of building much smaller ELINT satellites that would use the so-called multi-position geolocation method to accurately determine the position of radio-emitting sources on the ground. This could be achieved by using a pair of satellites to simultaneously pick up signals from such a source or a single satellite that would pick up the signals from slightly different locations in its orbit. The latter proposal was the subject of a patent and an article published in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
https://patents.s3.yandex.net/RU2734108C1_20201013.pdf
https://raen.info/upload/redactorfiles/03-10_budk.pdf

The drawing in the attachment is from the article and shows a single satellite picking up signals from a ground-based radar from three different locations in its orbit. The satellite depicted here is a Lotos-S, but this must have been chosen arbitrarily because the article clearly refers to a small satellite.

Another TsNIRTI article by some of the same authors says that the single-satellite geolocation method could be used to pinpoint the location of targets for electronic warfare satellites.
 https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=44335240
As a reminder, KB Arsenal is working on a nuclear-powered satellite called Ekipazh (14F350) with an electronic warfare payload that may well be provided by TsNIRTI.

According to the 2021 TsNIRTI article, the single-satellite geolocation method was to be tested “in real conditions on experimental products“, a possible sign that these were more than just paper studies.  TsNIRTI (which has not yet built any satellites in house) could build such small satellites in cooperation with KB Arsenal or other organizations. For instance, it has close ties with the MIREA Russian Technological University (RTU MIREA) in Moscow, which has done some work on cubesats. As can be determined from court documentation, RTU MIREA also has some kind of role in Ekipazh.

So Kosmos-2566 could potentially demonstrate the possibility of flying an ELINT payload on a small satellite, possibly paving the way for future constellations of such satellites that could among other things locate targets for electronic warfare satellites. I should caution though that there is no solid evidence linking Kosmos-2566 to the TsNIRTI research.  Although it would make sense for TsNIRTI to launch such a satellite together with one of its own Lotos-S satellites, the parent satellite and the subsatellite do not necessarily have to be products of one and the same company.   

Offline B. Hendrickx

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A new object (Object D) from this launch has appeared in orbit. According to a tweet from a company named LeoLabs, it separated from Object C on November 23 around 14.00 UTC. Object C is a subsatellite that was released from Kosmos-2570 on October 30. The same happened with the subsatellite (Kosmos-2566) released from Kosmos-2565 last year. It ejected an object 21 days after separating from Kosmos-2565. This time the interval between the appearance of Object C and D was somewhat longer,  namely 24 days. One possible explanation is that this is the moment that the subsatellite separates from the adapter with which it was originally attached to the Lotos satellite.

Object C has not yet been registered with the UN, but will likely be called Kosmos-2571. It will be interesting to see what Kosmos number(s) is/are given to the satellite(s) expected to be launched from Plesetsk later today (if any names are announced at all). 

Offline B. Hendrickx

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Object D appears to be an active satellite. It has maneuvered and it made a close pass to Object C on December 6.

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/12/leolabs-russia-china-time-suspicious-space-activity-for-some-us-holidays/

Quote
....
The latest evidence happened on Nov. 23, US Thanksgiving, when Russia’s Cosmos 2570 satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO) revealed itself to be a Matryoshka (nesting) doll system — comprising three consecutively smaller birds, performing up-close operations around each other, according to the company.
...
With regard to Cosmos 2570, LeoLabs’s analysis said that based on Space Force’s data, the service’s 18th Space Defense Squadron, responsible for space domain awareness, lost track of it when it maneuvered shortly after launch, but that LeoLabs days later was able to find it and its daughter, called Object C. “We were able to track both objects quickly and send frequent updates. On November 24, we were the first to detect, catalog, and deliver alerts to the Joint Task Force – Space Defense (JCO) on a secondary object released by sub-satellite Object C before the public catalog was able to respond. This prompted urgent action by all parties to track and identify the new object, now called Object D,” said the LeoLabs analysis, provided to Breaking Defense.
...
Then on Dec. 6, Cosmos 2570’s granddaughter began another maneuver, bringing it within less than 1 kilometer of its mother — extremely close and well beyond what is normally considered safe for orbital operations, Heath said. That move happened in “favorable lighting conditions,” suggesting that the granddaughter “has an electro-optical (EO) sensor payload.”

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