Prognoz 9 was a satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome

Baikonur Cosmodrome

The Baikonur Cosmodrome , also called Tyuratam, is the world's first and largest operational space launch facility. It is located in the desert steppe of Kazakhstan, about east of the Aral Sea, north of the Syr Darya river, near Tyuratam railway station, at 90 meters above sea level...

 on July 1, 1983, using a Molniya-M

Molniya-M

The Molniya-M , designation 8K78M, was a Russian carrier rocket derived from the R-7 Semyorka ICBM. First launched in 1964, it had replaced its predecessor, Molniya, by the end of 1965...

/8K78M-SOL carrier rocket. The satellite mass was 1060 kg. Orbital parameters attained: highly eccentric orbit periapsis 380.0 km, apoapsis 720000.0 km, period 38448.0 min (26.7 days), inclination 65.5°. The spacecraft was spin stabilized with a period of 113 s. The spin axis pointed towards the Sun, and was repointed every few days.

Mission

Investigation of residual radiation from the Big Bang and gamma flares in deep space, and solar corpuscular and electromagnetic radiation plasma flows and magnetic fields in circumterrestrial space to determine the effects of solar activity on the interplanetary medium and the earth's magnetosphere. In addition to Soviet scientific apparatus, carried instruments built in Czechoslovakia and France.

External links

• Prognoz 9 mission at NASA's HEASARC
• Prognoz 9 at Space Monitoring Data Center
• Prognoz program at Encyclopedia Astronautica