Proton rocket with American satellite to be launched from Baikonur

MOSCOW, October 14 (Itar-Tass) - The Proton-M carrier rocket with the
American communications satellite Sirius XM-5 will be launched from the
Baikonur cosmodrome on Thursday.
"The launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket equipped with the Briz-M
upper stage is scheduled for 22:53, Moscow time," spokesman for the
Khrunichev State Space Research and Production Centre Alexander Bobrenev
told Itar-Tass.
The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) specified that the "area
of the fall of the spent first stage of the carrier rocket is in the
Karaganda region (Kazakhstan), the second stage and nose cone - in the
Republic of Altai (Russia) and the third stage - in the Pacific Ocean."
"The total orbiting time from the moment of the rocket's blastoff to
the separation of the spacecraft from the upper stage will be 09 hours and
12 minutes," Roskosmos noted. The satellite will take the station point on
the geostationary orbit 85.2 degrees West longitude.
The Sirius XM-5 spacecraft was created by Space Systems/Loral on the
order of the American satellite radio broadcasting SIRIUS XM Radio that
has 20 million mobile and stationary subscribers. The satellite's design
useful life in orbit is 15 years, its mass is 5,980 kilograms.
The Proton-M carrier rocket and Briz-M upper stage were designed by
the Khrunichev Centre. The rocket is three-stage, liquid-propelled. Its
lift-off mass is about 700 tonnes. The Proton rockets are marketed on the
space services market by International Launch Services (ILS). Khrunichev
holds the controlling stake in ILS.
"The coming launch will become the ninth for the Proton-M carrier
rocket in 2010 and 360th in its flight history," the Khrunichev Centre
recalled. "It will be the sixth for ILS in 2010 and the 62nd since the
beginning of commercial exploitation the Proton in April 1996.
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.New party with bee as its symbol being created in Russia.

MOSCOW, October 14 (Itar-Tass) - A political party the symbol of which
is planned to become a bee is being created in Russia. The intended name
for the new union is the "Party of Business." Taking part in the founding
congress that will be held at the Izmailovo hotel complex on Thursday will
be some 300 delegates from 56 regions of the country.
The party's creation was initiated by a group of economists and
entrepreneurs headed by Konstantin Babkin who is the leader of the Novoye
Sodruzhestvo (New Commonwealth) group and the Russian union of
agricultural equipment producers - Rosagromash. "We have an idea what is
necessary to do for the development of the real sector of the economy,"
Babkin told Itar-Tass. He stressed that the party, if registered, will
take part in the State Duma elections in 2011 and presidential election of
2012.
The party programme is quite positive. It envisages the building of "a
reasonable industrial and tax policy" and the creation of "fair
competition" in the priority sectors of the economy, including
agriculture. The main task of the party is to make Russia a
high-technology advanced power with a multi-vector economy preserving at
the same time raw material resources and the human capital. The party
members call for pursuing the state and international policy with due
regard for the interests of Russian producers and promise to every Russian
"physical, moral and social protection." In the political sections of the
programme there is a clause on the need to develop the civil society and
promise to make the heads of RF subjects elective. Babkin believes that
the party's slogans should become the words "creation," "modernisation,"
"non-oil and gas economy" and "friendliness."
As for the name and symbol, the organisers stressed that this is
because the party is being created by "as busy as bees workers of the
Russian industry and agriculture" because the "old politicians from the
stacked Duma deck are not to be trusted any more."
The party members also say that they picked the symbol "without a
hidden agenda," however, "it went not without jokes," because the "main
beekeeper" of the country is regarded former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov who
has already stated that he intended to go in for politics. "Somebody asked
to join us," sources in the new structure's organising committee
confirmed. However, they said, "the negotiations attempt" failed and "only
new for Russian politics names will be announced at the congress."