An ISC Kosmotras Dnepr rocket will launch a multiple payload of CubeSats and other small international satellites from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on March 28th, 2007, at 06:46 GMT (2:46 a.m. EDT) TLE Data
State Vectors: P-POD 1 (CP4, AeroCube2, CSTB1): R = (3933798 5839155 141241) m V = (952.339 -487.728 -7476.968) m/s P-POD 2 (MAST): R = (3935220 5838413 130023) m V = (944.122 -500.565 -7480.144) m/s P-POD 3 (CP3, CAPE1, Libertad-1): R = (3936630 5837652 118799) m V = (935.899 -513.409 -7483.310) m/s
Preparations for launching an Egyptian satellite began at the Russian Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan on Saturday.
"Ukrainian, Egyptian, and American specialists assisted by specialists from the Vympel design bureau and the International Space Company Kosmotras started to unload auxiliary equipment essential for pre-launch tests of the Egyptian spacecraft EgyptSat and install it in place" - Undisclosed Baikonur source.
The satellite itself is still in a storage container. The EgyptSat is to be launched atop a Dnepr space rocket, but the launching date has not yet been set.
The Egyptian government plans to launch three new satellites by the end of 2006 or early 2007.
Ayman Desouki, head of Egypt's National Authority for Remote Sensing said the first satellite, named as Egyptsat 1, will be launched from Kazakhstan. Egyptsat 1 will carry two remote sensing devices -- an infrared one and a multi-spectrum one. Egyptsat 1, once launched, will be the country's first satellite for scientific research. It has been jointly built by Egypt's National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences in collaboration with Ukraine. The second and the third satellites will be named Egyptsat 2 and Sahrasat, respectively. The satellites are aimed at helping Egypt in the fields of water resources administration, monitoring natural disasters, climatic changes and rural planning. Egypt has already launched a number of satellites for nonscientific purposes. Nilesat 101 was launched in 1998 and Nilesat 102 in 2000, according to MENA. These satellites are now delivering more than 150 digital television channels as well as radio and multimedia services to more than several million homes over North Africa and the Middle East, from Morocco to the Gulf region.