"This spacecraft is Russia's another step in the Federal Space Programme", the press service said.
Ekspress-AM1 is the third of the five craft of the new series Ekspress-AM. They will be made and put in the geostationary orbit before 2005.
The first satellite, Ekspress-AM22, was launched in December 2003.
Ekspress-AM1 will be injected in the geosynchronous orbit and, upon orbital checks of its on-board systems, will begin service as part of the orbital satellite group of the Space Communication State Enterprise.
The satellite has been developed by the Krasnoyarsk-based Reshetnev Applied Mechanics Works jointly with the French company Alcatel Space.
Its warranted orbital service life is twelve years. The Ekspress-AM1 is designed for digital television and radio broadcasting, arranging channels of telephone communication, data transmission, broad-band access to Internet, development of VSAT networks, unfolding departmental and corporative networks, provision of multimedia services.
