A giant An-124 Ruslan cargo plane has landed at the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan with a telecommunications satellite that will be launched for Sirius XM radio in mid-October, the Russian Space Agency said on Sunday.
The Sirius XM-5 satellite and an array of support equipment were unloaded and taken to a clean room for final assembly and testing, Roscosmos said on its website.
The launch is expected to take place on October 14. The satellite will function as an in-orbit spare for the Sirius XM satellite radio network. All four previous Sirius satellites were launched on Proton rockets.
The October launch will be the sixth time a Proton-M heavy carrier rocket has lifted off with a foreign satellite in 2010. Three other Proton-M rockets have orbited Russian satellites.
The final assembly of the rocket started at Baikonur last month.
MOSCOW, September 12 (RIA Novosti)
