Russia's Khrunichev spacecraft center has delivered KazSat 1, Kazakhstan's first communications satellite, to Baikonur Cosmodrome for further preparations for its scheduled June 8 launch, RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.
Roscosmos, Russia's Space Agency, said the satellite will be flown atop a Proton-K carrier rocket with a DM-3 booster. The launch originally had been scheduled for last December, but mission controllers postponed liftoff until next month due to technical problems.
Khrunichev built KazSat under a 2004 contract with the Kazakh government. The $100 million satellite, which will occupy a geostationary orbit, is equipped with 12 Ku band responders and is designed to provide television broadcast and communications services for Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and part of Russia.
Daniyal Akhmetov, the Kazakh prime minister, said last November his country plans to establish a presence in space by building a group of satellites for telecommunications, geological surveying and remote Earth sensing, the news service reported.
