The March 12 launch of the Dnepr-1 carrying a South Korean satellite will go ahead as planned, a source close to the space industry told Russia's RIA Novosti on Monday.
It had earlier been reported that the launch of the Dnepr-1 by Kosmotras, a Moscow-based joint Russian-Ukrainian company, had been suspended indefinitely. A Roscosmos representative had told RIA Novosti at the beginning of this month that the program had been frozen, its future potential to be determined in the near future.
The Dnepr 1 is a commercial carrier rocket slightly modified from the Soviet ICBM codenamed the SS-18 Satan by NATO (Russian code-name RS-20). The modification of the rocket for civilian use into the Dnepr-1 was carried out in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine under the aegis of Kosmotras. Since 1999, commercial rockets have been launched from Baikanor in Kazakhstan and the Dombarovsky airbase in south-central Russia. The Dnepr has seen 21 successful launches to date, carrying small satellites and clusters of miniaturized satellites and CubeSats for companies from around the world. A June 2014 launch took up 37 lightweight satellites and modules simultaneously, a record payload package.
Along with the March 12 launch of South Korea's Kompsat 3A remote sensing satellite, whose purpose will be to collect hi-resolution images of the Earth, the Dnepr is also scheduled to launch two spacecraft for Iridium's satellite phone network, Spaceflight Now earlier explained.
