Space Rocket Center “Progress” has completed, under an agreement with GK Launch Services (part of the State Space Corporation “Roscosmos”), the manufacturing of the Soyuz- 2.1a launch vehicle and a head fairing for the launch of CAS500-1 satellite with secondary payloads of Russian and foreign customers in 2020.

“In accordance with the purchase order of GK Launch Services, the carrier rocket and the fairing for the CAS500-1 launch mission have been manufactured and ready for shipment to the Baikonur Cosmodrome. We continue manufacturing of the rocket and the fairing for the next launch in the interests of our partner, as scheduled,” commented Dmitry Baranov, Director General of SRC Progress.

GK Launch Services provides the orbiting of satellites within two launch missions, CAS500-1 (prime customer – Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and CAS500-2 (prime customer – Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI)) with secondary payloads of other countries.

“We are finalizing the compilation of the 2020 launch just to fill in some vacant slots in CubeSat deployers, while in the CAS500-2 launch mission, there are some rideshare opportunities for the launch of small satellites as a secondary payload, which we are now negotiating with a number of customers,” said Alexander Serkin, CEO of GK Launch Services.

The contract between the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, JSC Glavkosmos and JSC GK Launch Services for the launch of the South Korean CAS500-1 Earth remote sensing satellite was signed in August 2017. The SC is planned to be launched on the Soyuz-2.1 launch vehicle with the Fregat upper stage from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 2020.