Around 5:15 Beijing time on December 1, Russia launched another Soyuz rocket at the Pleshetsk space launch site. The load code for this launch is "Cosmos-2565". Due to confidentiality reasons, the load has not been announced, and it is also unknown whether other small satellites that were hitched together were launched.
November 28 Russia just launched an Allied 2.1b rocket in Pleshetsk, sending a Gronas-M satellite into orbit. The payload launched this time on December 1 is supposed to be a "Lotus S1" satellite.
"Lotus S1" satellite
Lotus S1 is a Russian military reconnaissance satellite, mainly used for reconnaissance of electronic signals. It is part of Russia's "Tengman" project. The "Tengman" project has two satellite constellations, one is "Lotus" and the other is "Peony". The two satellites have the same platforms and can passively detect electronic signals. The Peony satellite has an active radar.
"Peony"Satellite
These two satellites themselves plan to be launched with Ukraine's zenith rockets. Since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine deepened after the Soviet Union split, Russia later decided to use its own Alliance rockets to launch, which made the weight of the satellites necessary to be reduced to match the capacity of the Alliance rockets. Therefore, some electronic devices are removed, such as low-frequency radio detection antennas, so the detection accuracy of satellites has also decreased.
Presekk is one of the three space launch sites currently used by the Russian military and the Russian State Space Administration. The other two space launch sites are Baikonur space launch site in Kazakhstan, and Eastern space launch site in the Russian Far East region.
