Monitor-E

Monitor-E was the first Russian satellite of a fleet of newly designed, small Earth observing satellites. It was launched 26 August 2005 at 18:34 UTC from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, and placed in a Sun-synchronous orbit of.
The satellite was decommissioned 21 January 2008 and decayed from orbit 22 September 2020.

Design

Monitor-E had a set of remote sensing devices. They were intended to make maps of the Earth's surface to be used for ecological monitoring and charting geological features. It was built by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center.
A mock-up of Monitor-E was launched 30 June 2003 aboard Rokot rocket.

Specifications

Sensors

8 m panchromatic, swath width of not less 90 km
20–40 m multispectral, swath width of not less than 160 km

Onboard storage

2 × 200 gigabit capacity

Data communications

Transmission speeds of 15.36/61.44/122.88 Mbit/s

Orbit

Altitude: - 97.6 degree Sun-synchronous inclination

Spacecraft

Planned active life: 5 years
Orientation precision: 0.1 degrees
Stabilization precision: 0.001 degrees/s
Average daily power consumption: 450 W
Mass:

Communications problems

After launch, communications with Monitor-E was initially difficult to establish, but a few hours later it was successfully contacted and control was established. On 19 October 2005 new problems developed and no communication was possible since then. Later on communications were restored and photographs from both cameras were published on 30 November 2005.