Carried C and Ku band communications payloads, and Ka-band beacons for a propagation study. The launch vehicle put the satellite in an initial 182 km x 35,755 km x 19.4 deg geostationary transfer orbit. By January 7 its onboard apogee engine had placed it in a 32,543 x 35,741 km x 0.7 deg subsynchronous orbit on the way to GEO. By February 4 it was on station at 73.9 deg E.

Thaicom Plc of Bangkok communications satellite with Ku and C-band payloads for coverage of southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The initial burn of the Falcon 9 second stage reached a 197 x 497 km parking orbit, and a second burn sent the Thaicom 6 payload to a 375 x 90,039 km x 22.5 deg supersync transfer orbit. By February 3 the satellite had manuevered to a 35,784 x 35,789 km x 0.1 deg geostationary orbit over 78.4 deg East.

Delivered 1,261 kg of cargo to the ISS. The Cygnus cargo ship SS C. Gordon Fullerton entered an initial 221 x 259 km x 51.6 deg orbit to begin its rendezvous sequence with ISS. Arrived at 250 metres from ISS at 10:01 GMT January 12; moved in to the 10 m capture position; then captured by the Canadarm-2 at 11:08 GMT and berthed on the Harmony module's nadir port at 13:05 GMT. It contained 1465 kg of cargo for ISS, including two bags with a total mas of 152 kg containing a set of 28 Dove 3U Earth-observing cubesats (about 5 kg each) for Planet Labs and five 1U/2U cubesats. Unberthed from the Harmony module and released by the robot arm at 11:42 GMT 18 February. After two orbital maneuvers Cygnus underwent destructive reentry over the Pacific with loss of signal at 18:23 GMT February 19. First launch of Orbital's Antares 120 variant, with a more powerful ATK Castor 30B second stage replacing the Castor 30 used on earlier flights.

NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite; provided space-to-space relays, channelling high bandwidth data from spacecraft to the ground. TDRS 12 was the second replenishment satellite in the third generation of the TDRS system, using a high power version of the BSS-601HP satellite bus. By February 4 TDRS 12 was in a 35,780 x 35,795 km x 7.0 deg inclined geostationary orbit over 150.0 deg West.

The crew performed a rerun of December's attempt to install the UrtheCast video cameras outside the Zvezda module. This time the cameras were left outside, and the high resolution camera was returning telemetry; the medium resolution camera, however, is still not working.

ISS mission 54P; docked at the Pirs module of the ISS at 22:22 GMT the same day as launch. Undocked from the Pirs module at 13:58 GMT April 7; it remained in a 360 x 417 km orbit for Radar-Progress ionospheric studies until April 18, when it was deorbited over the Pacific.

Communications satellite for Hong-Kong-based Asia Broadcast Satellite. Stationed at 75 deg E, serving four continents: 6 dedicated high powered Ku-band beams for DTH services in the Eastern Hemisphere; C-band beams for Africa and SE Asia connectivity requirements; Ka-band beam targeting the MENA region for commercial and military applications.

Joint French/Italian military communications satellite for both military and civilian government communications; in France the civilian space agency CNES and the military procurement agency DGA were both responsible, while in Italy the corresponding Agenzia Spaziale Italiana and Segredifesa/DNA agencies were involved.

Flock-1 satellites, 3U Dove-class Earth imaging cubesats, for the San Francisco based company PlanetLabs, were deployed by the ISS JEM RMS at about 08:31 GMT on February 11. By February 15 all 16 satellites from the first Nanoracks bag had been ejected; by 19 February all of the Flock-1 satellites had been ejected.

Joint US-Japanese Global Precipitation Measurement satellite; carried the JAXA/NICT/NEC Toshiba Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar and the GSFC/Ball GPM Microwave Imager. The satellite was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and registered as a US satellite.

The third planned rendezvous burn at 23:48 GMT was cancelled due to a software problem, leaving the spacecraft in a 297 x 333 km x 51.7 deg orbit. Rendezvous with the ISS was rescheduled to 27 March. It maneuvered to a 414 x 425 km orbit on 26 March. Docking with the ISS at the Poisk module was at 23:53 GMT on 27 March. On September 10 at 23:01 GMT Skvortsov, Artemev and Swanson undocked from the Poisk module in Soyuz TMA-12M. The deorbit burn at 01:30 GMT September 11 was followed by module separation at 01:58, atmosphere entry at 02:01, and landing in Kazakhstan at 02:23.

Meteorology / Ionosphere Mission. Failed and landed near a village in an unplanned area of western Kazakhstan; launches within Kazakhstan have been suspended pending the accident investigation. The MN-300/MR-30 sounding rocket system had a nominal apogee of 300 km, and given the range achieved probably attained a comparable height this time despite the failure.

Penultimate US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program payload in orbit. The DMSP Block 5D-3 S-19 spacecraft was built by RCA/East Windsor, New Jersey and transferred to Lockheed Martin/Sunnyvale after closure of the former facility. The AV-044 Centaur stage reignited to go into heliocentric orbit, like that for the previous DMSP launch. The DMSP satellite's solar array did not completely deploy, but the satellite was expected to enter service nonetheless.

First satellite in the European Commission's Sentinel/Copernicus Earth observing program. Sentinel-1A's C-band SAR was 13.3 x 0.8m in size. The satellite was only a quarter the mass of its predecessor Envisat which carried a wider array of instruments; in the Sentinel program there will be a series of smaller, more specialized satellites. At 05:14 GMT on April 5, Sentinel made a maneuver to avoid a very close pass by NASA's defunct ACRIMSAT satellite, which failed on December 14 2013 after suffering battery issues.

Second dedicated navigation satellite for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. After a coast phase the fourth stage ignited to accelerate the vehicle to a 269 x 20,558 km x 19.3 deg transfer orbit. IRNSS-1B used its onboard engine to join IRNSS-1A in circular inclined geosynchronous orbit, and on April 17 was in a 35,565 x 35,878 km x 31.0 deg orbit over the Indian Ocean.

Docked with the Pirs module of the ISS at 21:14 GMT the same day as launch. Undocked from at 21:44 GMT on July 21 and then carried out 10 days of independent operations as part of the Radar-Progress experiment program. Deorbited on July 31 with impact at 22:43 GMT in the South Pacific.

Placed in an initial 313 x 322 km orbit. The first flight of a Falcon 9 with experimental landing legs on the first stage. Falcon 9 stage 1 reignited during descent after reaching around 120 km, and touched down vertically on the ocean after demonstrating that it could maintain its orientation during the return from space. The Falcon 9 second stage carried five cubesats; after ejecting them, the stage was deorbited over the Indian Ocean and destroyed during reentry. The Dragon trunk carried the OPALS and HDEV experiments for laser communications and Earth imaging respectively. They would be installed on the ISS - JSC's HDEV on the Columbus module EPF, and JPL's OPALS for the ELC-1 platform. Spacesuit EMU 3003 was also aboard Dragon. Following unloading of cargo and reloading with items to be returned to earth, the hatch to Dragon CRS-3 was closed on May 17. Dragon was unberthed by the SSRMS Canadarm-2 at about 12:00 GMT May 18 and released at 13:26 GMT. The deorbit burn at 18:12 to 18:22 GMT was followed by trunk separation at about 18:24 GMT, atmosphere entry at 18:45 GMT and splashdown west of Baja California at 19:05 GMT. It was reported that some water leaked into the Dragon cabin after splashdown, but NASA said the cargo was not damaged.

Cubesat for Cornell University's Space Systems Design Stuido. The satellite had a mass of 2.68 kg, of which 0.52 kg was to have been ejected on May 4 in the form of 104 tiny 5-gram Sprites, circuit boards which acted as independent satellites with small transmitters able to send a simple message to ground stations. A timer problem on Kicksat meant that the deployment of the Sprite subsatellites was reset to May 16. However, Kicksat, and its undeployed Sprites, were destroyed when it reentered on May 14.

Follow-on relay satellites, replacing the Luch (Altair) and Luch-2 (Gelios) satellites. Data relay channels pass on communications between other orbiting satellites to the ground. Also can receive COSPAS/SARSAT ground-based distress signals and relay them to ground stations, and collect and retransmit Planet-S System hydrometeorological data.

Launch vehicle suffered a third stage failure and the stage and payload reentered over China. Debris was found north of Harbin, in Heilongjiang province. The communications satellite payload, Ekspress AM-4R, had been built to replace a satellite lost in an earlier Proton failure; it used an Astrium Eurostar 3000 bus and was intended for the Russian domestic operator Kosmicheskaya Svyaz.

Atlas flight AV-046 left the USA 252 payload in an 840 x 35745 km x 20.7 deg geostationary transfer orbit. It was expected to enter geostationary orbit and was thought to be a QUASAR communications and data relay satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office - either QUASAR 18 or 19, uncertain due to the difficulty of distinguising early QUASAR and JUMPSEAT satellites in the 1970s.

Delivered 1,494 kg of cargo to the ISS. After rendezvous with the ISS the station's SSRMS arm grappled it at 10:36 GMT on July 16 and berthed it to the Harmony module at 12:53 GMT. Unberthed at 09:14 GMT on August 15 and released by Canadarm-2 at 10:40 GMT. Deorbited and reentered at 13:15 GMT on 17 August over the South Pacific.

The second stage of the booster deployed a set of six VHF messaging relay satellites for Orbcomm. The second stage carried two ESPA rings (developed for EELV auxilary payloads) each carrying four slots for the 172 kg satellites; the two extra slots were filled with mass dummies which remained attached. The Falcon 9 first stage made a flyback maneuver and deployed landing legs as part of engineering tests for future recovery; the stage was destroyed as it landed on the ocean.

Foton-M, using the Vostok reentry capsule, but a new extended length service module. Microgravity and life sciences experiments were on board, including geckos and tardigrades. The return capsule included samples exposed on the exterior for reentry studies. On July 24 it was revealed that the satellite was not responding to ground commands, although it continued to send back telemetry. Control was later reported to have been regained, but a scheduled orbit raise burn was cancelled, and on August 12 the orbit was still 250 x 542 km. Landed in the Orenburg district on September 1 at 09:18 GMT. The geckos carried as part of the payload were found to have died.

Small satellite for the Air Force Research Lab which made observations of the Delta rocket's second stage at ranges from 50 kilometers down to a few kilometers, for further development of satellite inspection technology. Orbit and mass classified; figures shown are speculative.

Used an R-4D bipropellant thruster to reach GEO. The first R-4D burn on August 6 raised the orbit from 180 km x 35,762 km x 24.3 deg to 7,137 x 35,751 km x 10.7 deg. By August 11 the satellite was in a 35,725 x 35,732 km x 0.1 deg orbit drifting east over 104 deg E.

Commercial imaging satellite in a 10:15 local time of descending node sun-synchronous orbit. Ground resolution of 0.31 m panchromatic, and 1.1 m multispectral. After releasing the satellite the Centaur stage restarted and used up its extra propellant by accelerating to an escape trajectory to solar orbit. WV-3 had an imager with 0.3m ground resolution in addition to multispectral and 3.7-micron IR cameras. Digital Globe was formerly EarthWatch Inc, and merged with the former Space Imaging Inc. (GeoEye) in 2012, which itself absorbed EOSAT in 1996 and OrbImage in 2006, completing the consolidation of the first generation of US commercial imaging companies.

The airlock was depressurized at 13:40 GMT and the hatch opened at 14:02 GMT . At Artemev hand-launched the 1U cubesat Chasqui-1, a joint Peruvian-Russian project. The crew also worked with materials exposure experiments; installed the EXPOSE-R2 experient on Zvezda's URM-D-II boom, and on Poisk retrieved Panel 2 of the Vinoslivost experiment and swapped out the SKK-1-M2 cassette for the new SKK-2-M2; and installed the new BKDO experiment to study the effects of rocket thruster plumes impinging on the station. A Biorisk exposure canister was retrieved from Pirs. The astronauts went back inside to close the Pirs hatch at 19:13 GMT and repressurize the airlock at about 19:16 GMT.

Europe's first two Galileo FOC (Full Operational Capability) navigation satellites were put on a suborbital trajectory by the booster. The Fregat-MT No. 1039 upper stage made a first burn to put the stack in elliptical transfer orbit, and then began the coast to apogee. At apogee at 16:05 GMT the Fregat made a second burn intended to circularize the orbit at 23500 km x and 55.0 deg inclination. The satellites separated from the Fregat at 16:15 GMT. Unfortunately the Fregat was wrongly oriented and the orbit actually reached was 13,700 x 25,900 km x 49.7 deg. An attitude control thrusters may have failed during the coast, leaving Fregat pointing the wrong way at second main engine ignition.

Communications satellite for Asiasat, a Hong Kong based telecom company. The satellite had C and Ku band communications payloads and an additional C-band payload for the Thai operator Thaicom; this payload was marketed as Thaicom 7. Stationed over 119.8 deg E.

Classified satellite in an unusual high-perigee geostationary transfer orbit, possibly around 11,800 x 36,000 km, after an initial 174 km x 28,860 km x 28 deg orbit. CLIO's owner was an unidentified US government agency - possibly the National Reconnaissance Office. It may have a communications or signals intelligence payload.

ISS resupply mission. The Dragon Trunk carried two packages, the ISS RapidScat radar scatterometer science instrument and the RapidScat Nadir Adapter, which was to be installed on the SDX nadir attach point of the Columbus module's external payload facility. The Dragon cabin carried SpinSat, an 0.56m spherical NRL satellite to be deployed by the Kibo JEM-RMS, and the NASA-Ames Rodent Research 1 life sciences payload with 20 mice. The SSRMS Canadarm-2 grappled the Dragon at 10:52 GMT on September 23 and berthed it to the Harmony node at 13:21 GMT. Unberthed and released by the SSRMS at 13:57 GMT on 25 October. It made its deorbit burn at 18:43 GMT and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 19:38 GMT off Baja California near 34 deg N x 123.5 deg W.

Expedition 42 crew transported to the ISS (Samokutyaev, Wilmore and Serova). The port solar array failed to deploy after Soyuz separated from the launch vehicle third stage, but this did not impact the rendezvous. Soyuz TMA-14M docked with the Poisk module of the ISS at 02:11 GMT on September 26. Serova was the fourth Russian woman in space but the first since 1997. On March 11 2015 at 22:44 GMT Soyuz TMA-14M undocked from the Poisk module with the same crew aboard. It performed its deorbit burn at 01:16 GMT March 12 and landed in Kazakhstan at around 02:08 GMT.

The airlock was depressurized at about 12:25 GMT and repressurized at 18:43 GMT. The failed Pump Module, serial number 04, which was stowed on the Mobile Base System's POA mount during an EVA on 2013 Dec 21, was relocated to External Stowage Platform 2. A new unit called the Mobile Transporter Relay Assembly (MTRA) was attached to the transporter to provide backup power.

The final Briz-M burn was incomplete, leaving the communications satellite in an orbit with a 1373 min period - significantly below the planned orbit. Ekspress AM-6 had to reach its geosynchronous destination using extra xenon propellant from its own electric propulsion system at the cost of operational lifetime. Ekspress AM-6 orbit is 1373.2 min, 31307 x 37784 km x 0.7 deg; the Briz-M's auxiliary SOZ thrusters disposed of the stage into a 1512.4 min, 34984 x 39549 km x 1.0 deg orbit. Stationed in geosynchronous orbit at 140 deg east.

Removed and jettisoned Radiometriya experiment from Zvezda Plane II, removed EXPOSE-R experiment protective cover, took surface samples from Pirs extravehicular hatch 2 window (TEST experiment), removed and jettisoned two KURS attennas from Poisk, photographed exterior of ISS Russian segment.

Chang'e-5 Flight Test Vehicle, also called the Reentry Return Flight Test Mission. The spacecraft was launched into a 209 km x 413,000 km lunar transfer orbit. The vehicle was a precursor to the planned Chang'e-5 mission and consisted of a satellite bus similar to the Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter, topped with a reentry vehicle, a subscale version of the Shenzhou landing module. The craft made an 8-day flight to loop around the Moon and return to Earth. It passed 11,300 km from the Moon on October 27 and returned to Earth on October 31. The descent capsule separated from the main vehicle at 21:53 GMT and landed north of Hohhot at 22:42 GMT. The service module made a burn at 21:56 GMT to avoid reentry and swung past the Earth to head out towards the Earth-Moon L2 point. Stationed at L2 Lagrangian point.

The Orbital Cygnus Orb-3 cargo ship; destroyed during launch. As well as ISS cargo, the Orb-3 mission was carrying 26 PlanetLabs Flock-1d 3U cubesats, the JPL/U-Texas RACE 3U cubesat, the Arkyd-3 3U cubesat from Planetary Resources, and also the GOMX-2 ship tracking 2U cubesat from GOMX of Aalborg, Denmark.

The Spaceship Two S/N 01 'VSS Enterprise' rocket-powered glider was dropped from the White Knight 2 carrier aircraft, based at Mojave Spaceport in California, and was intended for passenger suborbital flights to be operated by Virgin Galactic. The vehicle had made 12 captive flights, 32 glide flights, and 3 rocket-powered flights prior to the accident. The glide flights had been piloted by a mixture of Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic test pilots. Only short rocket burns had been made and the highest apogee was only 22 km. On October 31, flight PF04 made a short rocket burn of 9 seconds, at which point the co-pilot unlocked the rotating tail booms, apparently by mistake; these were not intended to be deployed at the then speed of around Mach 1.0 during rocket-powered flight. The unlocked booms then accidentally deployed ('feathered'), followed by disintegration of the vehicle. The debris fell near Koehn Lake in California, about 40 km NE of the takeoff airport at Mojave. Pilot Pete Siebold parachuted to safety and was hospitalized with serious injuries; co-pilot Mike Alsbury was killed in the crash. The second SS Two, S/N 02 'VSS Voyager', was still under construction at Mojave.

High resolution imaging satellite developed by NEC and managed by Japan Space Systems (formerly USEF, part of the Ministry of Trade and Industry) rather than by the main Japanese space agency JAXA. The ASNARO had 0.5m resolution on a 10 km nadir swath width. Sun synchronous orbit; 1100 GMT local time of the descending node.

Also known as also known as ChubuSat-1, a project of Nagoya and Daido universities. (The name Kinschachi refers to the golden sea-monster statues on Nagoya castle). It carries d 10m resolution, 14 km swath imager, a 130 m resolution, 7-13 micron infrared camera reported to be for atmosphere temperature profiles and space debris monitoring, and an amateur radio relay payload. Sun synchronous orbit; 1055 GMT local time of the descending node.

'Horsetail'; also called QSAT-EOS, Kyushu Satellite for Earth Observation System Demonstration. The satellite carried a CMOS camera with 4 m resolution and 7 km swath, a magnetometer and an in-situ space debris detector, as well as a deployable 3-meter kapton sail used as a drag augmentation device. Sun synchronous orbit; 1055 GMT local time of the descending node.

The 85 kg Philae lander was ejected from the Rosetta probe 22 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 08:35 GMT. Philae's thruster was not working, and at 15:33 on contact with 67P's surface at the Agilkia landing site, the harpoons intended to lock it to the surface apparently did not deploy. The lander bounced off the surface gently and settled down in another location at 17:26, for a second briefer bounce that resulted in final touchdown at 17:33, with the lander tilted, with one of its three legs off the surface. The lander is in the shadow of a crater cliff and did not receive enough sunlight to recharge its 2.5-day-life batteries. Science data was received, but then contact was broken.

Second launch of the Chinese 2nd Artillery's operationally responsive Kuaizhou (Swift Boat) launch vehicle with a military payload. Kuaizhou 1 was launched to a similar sun synchronous orbit with 11:00 local time of the descending node in September 2013; after regular maintenance burns for a year, during October 2014 Kuaizhou 1's orbit was raised to 365 x 390 km. Kuaizhou-2 was in a sun synchronous orbit; 1300 GMT local time of the descending node.

Docked at the Rassvet module of the ISS at 02:49 GMT on 24 November 2014 with the crew of Shkaplerov, Virts, and Cristoforetti. Return was delayed over a month before the booster for the Soyuz TMA-16M crew could be cleared for flight following the third-stage explosion of the booster for Progress TMA-11M. Undocked on 11 June 2015 with the same crew at 10:20 GMT and then landed at 13:43 in Kazakhstan.

The Japanese JEM-RMS robot arm extracted the SSIKLOPS (Cyclops) deployer and its attached SpinSat satellite from the Kibo airlock and positioned it for deployment. The Cyclops then ejected SpinSat into orbit. SpinSat was a Naval Research Lab satellite to test new microthrusters for attitude control.

The spacecraft was intended to rendezvous with asteroid 1999 JU3, survey it from orbit, touch down briefly to sample the surface, and return samples to Earth. Launched into a 0.915 AU x 1.089 AU x 6.8 deg solar orbit. Five small, beanbag-like 'target markers' could be ejected onto the surface in advance to help guide the vehicle. Hayabusa-2 also carried three 1 kg class lander/hopper devices, Minerva II-1a, II-1b and II-2, which were to be ejected onto the surface, together with a 10 kg German-built lander called MASCOT. Hayabusa-2 was also to eject a 'Self-Contained Impactor' (SCI) device onto the surface. As the parent spacecraft moved off to the side it would further eject the DCAM-3 camera subsatellite, which would monitor detonation of SCI's high explosive, intended to ram the SCI's body into the asteroid and generate an artificial crater.

Also known as ArtSat-2; from Tama Art University. The yellowish, tapered-helix assembly was intended mainly as a work of art although it also carries an amateur radio communications payload with a limited range. In a 0.915 AU x 1.089 AU x 6.8 deg solar orbit.

Small spacecraft experiment to test interplanetary navigation with an ion engine. As of May 2015 the mission plan to perform an Earth swingby followed by flyby of asteroid 2000 DP107 had been abandoned following malfunction of its ion engine. The probe, in solar orbit, continued to make scientific measurements with its ultraviolet camera. Procyon was originally in a 0.9 x 1.1 AU x 6.8 deg solar orbit.

Exploration Flight Test 1 used an Orion Crew Module (probably around 9400 kg) with an LAS launch escape tower, atop a dummy Service Module with jettisonable side panels, which in turn was fixed to the OSA (Orion-to-Stage-Adapter). This vehicle was mounted on the second stage of a Delta IV Heavy vehicle 369. Delta 369's second stage was inserted into a 185 km x 888 km x 28.8 deg orbit at 12:22 GMT, 17 minutes after launch. The stage made a second burn at 14:00, entering a -37 km x 5.807 km orbit; apogee was at 1510. At 15:28 the Orion CM separated from the stage. The Orion CM made a small RCS adjust burn at 16:02 and entered the atmosphere at 8.9 km/s at 16:18, landing at 16:29 off Baja California at 23.60 deg N x 116.46 deg W. It was recovered by the USS Anchorage.

Probably a signals intelligence satellite with an attached SBIRS-HEO early warning sensor as a secondary payload. This mission used the new RL-10C-1 upper stage engine for the first time (refurbished from Delta IV RL-10B-2 engines; replacing the RL10A-4 used previously)

Launch of the first GSLV-III rocket on a suborbital test flight. The S200 solid boosters and L110 core stage, with two Vikas engines, propelled an inert second stage to 126 km and 5.3 km/s. Second stage separation and payload separation were also tested; the payload was the Crew Module Atmospheric Reentry Experiment, a prototype command module for an Indian manned spacecraft with a mass of 3735 kg which splashed down in the Bay of Bengal. Orbit was around -4418 x 126 km x 32.7 deg.

First launch of the Angara-A5 booster, composed of five standard URM-1 modules and a Briz-M upper stage. Four URM-1's, clustered around a URM-1 in the core, formed the first stage. The core URM-1 was the second stage. The four first stage URM-1's separated at 06:01 GMT at an altitude of 82 km; the core URM-1 shut down and separated at 06:03 GMT at an altitude of 148 km, reentering downrange near Tomsk. The nose fairing was jettisoned 10 seconds later. The third stage was a URM-2, powered by the RD-0124A engine; it reached a marginally suborbital trajectory and, after separating from the upper composite section, reentered in the Philippine Sea at a range of 2320 km from the launch site. Meanwhile, the fourth stage, a standard Briz-M (S/N 88801) propelled the stack into a 250 km, 63 deg parking orbit with a burn starting at 06:11 GMT. After coasting to the equator, two perigee burns at 07:03 and 09:26 GMT boosted the apogee to 5,000 km and then 35,800 km, while reducing inclination to 60.6 deg. The Briz-M's additional propellant tank (DTB), now empty, was jettisoned into a 433 km x 35,808 km x 60.6 deg orbit. The payload on this flight was a dummy satellite called the IPM. The stack coasted to apogee and at 14:44 GMT, began the fourth burn to enter circular geosynchronous orbit. At 14:57 GMT the Briz sent a simulated separation command, but the payload remained attached to the stage as intended. After a few more hours, two burns of the Briz stage's SOZ auxiliary engines moved the stack to a graveyard orbit a few hundred kilometers above GEO. This was the first GEO mission ever launched from Plesetsk.

Russian military satellite that initially entered a 240 km x 899 km x 67.1 deg orbit. Russian press reports and official announcements did not give any name for the satellite, not even a Cosmos cover name, the first time this had happened since 1963. Believed to be the second Lotos-S signals intelligence satellite. The Lotos-S satellites had a payload similar to the Tselina-2, but used a Russian Yantar-type spacecraft bus from TsSKB-Progress instead of the Tselina-2's Okean class bus from the Ukranian Yuzhnoye organization. The spacecraft circularized its orbit to 899 km x 909 km on December 26, joining Lotos-S No. 801 which was in a 903 km x 907 km x 67 deg orbit.

Resurs-P 47KS No. 2 civil imaging spacecraft. The main payload was the Geoton-L1 imager with 0.5m aperture and 38 km swath, 1.0 m panchromatic and 3 to 4m color resolution. Geoton-L1 had 7 passbands and a 216-channel hyperspectral imager. The KShMSA wide field multispectral camera was also part of the Resurs-P primary payload; an AIS ship tracking receiver from OAO RKS and Lomonosov Federal State Univ.'s Nuklon cosmic ray detector were secondary payloads. Nuklon detected cosmic ray nuclei with atomic number 1 to 30 in the 1 to 1000 TeV energy range. Resurs-P went into a 190 km x 428 km initial orbit that was raised to its operational height of 330 km x 471 km on December 29. Sun synchronous orbit; 1150 GMT local time of the descending node.