Russia launches classified payload • Spaceleaks

The Russian Aerospace Forces has launched a Lotos-S1 No.805 reconnaissance satellite, the fifth satellite in the Russian military’s Liana program, to complement their next-generation Liana SIGINT (signal intelligence) satellite system. Liana consists of two families of satellites – Lotos and Pion – however, all of the satellites launched to date have been part of the Lotos series.

The Soyuz that was used for this particular mission was a 2.1b variant, flying with the standard Soyuz 2 booster and core stage engines but with an uprated RD-0124 engine on the Blok-I second stage.

The spacecraft was built by TsSKB Progress.

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