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OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE
The SC Integral Launch
With Use of Block DM2

October 17, 2002. Cosmodrome Baikonur.

Today the SC Integral was successfully inserted into the target
high-elliptical near-earth orbit.

The SC mass is about 3.95 ton. Designed properties of target orbit are 
as follows:
Inclination is 51.6 degrees; minimum altitude is 685 km (at perigee);
maximum altitude is 153,000 km (at apogee); orbital period is 72 hrs.

The direct SC insertion into the target orbit from the transfer orbit
provided by the launch vehicle Proton-K was implemented by the Block 
DM2.

The LV Proton-K/DM2/SC Integral rocket&space complex was launched at 
08:41 in Moscow Summer Time at Cosmodrome Baikonur.

The flight time from liftoff up to SC separation was about 1 hour 32
minutes.

The Spacecraft is manufactured by Alenia Company (Italy) by request of
European Space Agency and is an International on-orbit astrophysical
gamma-laboratory, which intended to monitor the space radiation using 
a high-frequency scientific equipment in the range of hamma- and 
X-radiation as well as a visible spectrum with the purpose to discover 
the supernova explosion, identify the large "black holes", study the 
superdense objects, such as neutron stars and "black holes", and other 
sources of gamma-radiation.

Since 1967 the S.P. Korolev RSC Energia specialists in association 
with subcontractors performed 266 launches of all upper stage 
modifications of D and DM type.

The Spacecraft was launched at Cosmodrome Baikonur in the framework of
Federal Space Program.

RSC Energia is responsible for the upper stage design /manufacture 
/operation including its integration with the Spacecraft.

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