Export Soyuz 2 1b rocket to Plesetsk cosmodrome launch site

Russia’s Soyuz-2-1v rocket made its fourth flight Thursday, deploying the Kosmos 2525 satellite for the Russian military. The second of three orbital launches worldwide on Friday and six across a busy Easter period for spaceflight, Soyuz lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 20:38:42 Moscow Time (17:38 UTC).

Thursday’s launch saw a Soyuz-2-1v rocket place Kosmos 2525 into orbit for Russia’s military. Very little has been made public about this payload – even for a military satellite – other than unofficial reports that it was based around a new satellite bus developed by VNIIEM Corporation of Moscow.

The Eksperimentalny Maly Kosmichesky Apparat (EMKA) – or Experimental Small Spacecraft – is a platform developed by VNIIEM to support future miniature reconnaissance satellites.

The name Kosmos 2525 is a sequential designation under a system that is used for most of Russia’s military spacecraft. The Soviet Union began using numbered designations beginning with Kosmos – meaning “Space” or “Cosmos” – in 1962. Initially the name was used for any spacecraft in orbit that the Soviet Union did not want to identify publicly – including prototypes, satellites and planetary probes which had failed to reach their intended destinations and some scientific missions as well as military applications.