Key Russian Express-AM6 satellite successfully launched

Russia’s Express-AM6 satellite has successfully been launched on board a Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The satellite will be deployed into geostationary orbit at 53 ° East, from where it will provide coverage of European Russia, the Urals and Western Siberia as well as the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Express-AM6 was commissioned by the Russian Satellite Communications Company and built by Reshetnev ISS of Russia in association with Canada-based MDA and the Russian Radio Research and Development Institute. The satellite is equipped with 72 C-, Ku-, Ka- and L- bands transponders.

The satellite will provide additional infrastructure for digital TV and radio broadcasting services, including HD television, accessible to Russia’s western regions. AM6 is also designed designed to support mobile presidential and governmental communications, broadband internet and multi-service access as well as to set up VSAT communications networks in European Russia, the Urals and western Siberia. The craft be used for international projects by Russian and international users in Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

The Express-AM6 satellite is expected to be commissioned at 53° East in the first quarter of 2015 after completion of requisite flight tests and inspection of all on-board systems.

“It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that the launch of the Express-AM6 is the most anticipated event of the year in the satellite industry. With the new satellite in action, the overarching task of broadcasting nationwide television programmes from Kaliningrad to Irkutsk will be addressed,” said general director of RSCC Yuri Prokhorov.

“The Express-AM6 has been built under the Federal Target Program ‘Development of TV and Radio Broadcasting in Russia in 2009-2015’. The first satellite produced in the context of this Federal Target Program is Express-AM5 and it has been servicing the consumer needs in the Far East and Siberia since April 2014. Another two spacecraft – Express-AM7 and AM8 – are expected to be launched in the first quarter of the next year. Thus, continuous high-quality broadcasting service will be secured for the first, second and subsequent federal multiplexes throughout Russia.”