OREANDA-NEWS. September 15, 2009. Prelaunch operations with Russian weather satellite Meteor-M #1 and other 5 payloads continued today at Baikonur`s site 31.

Leonid Makridenko, DG of Iosifian R&D and production company, which designed and produced the satellite, says that multipurpose Earth remote sensing spacecraft are considered the most complicated.

"Our company dealt with development of such satellites for many years. About 50 spacecraft of Meteor type have been orbited within 25 years. Today, new Meteor-M designed under the Federal Space Program is ready for launch", Makridenko says.

Meteor-M satellites are a new generation of Russian meteorological satelllites. They will feature following instruments:
   MSU-MR - Global and regional unit for cloud cover mapping
   KMSS - multichannel scanning unit for Earth surface monitoring
   MTVZA - imager/sounder for atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles, sea surface wind
   IRFS-2 - advanced IR sounder for atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles
   Severjanin - SAR for Ice monitoring
   Radiomet - radio occulation unit for atmospheric temperature and pressure profiles.
   Meteor-M is to be orbited by Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat on Sept. 15.