MOSCOW. Dec 6 (Interfax-AVN) - An airplane has delivered Germany's SAR-Lupe satellite to the Plesetsk launch pad in Russia's Arkhangelsk region, Russian Space Forces spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov told Interfax-AVN on Wednesday.
"Specialists of the armament service and the cosmodrome's spacecraft testing and application center have unloaded the spacecraft and delivered it to the assembly and test shop," Kuznetsov noted.
According to him, new automatic loader trucks arrived at the cosmodrome the day before especially to unload the 8-m container with the spacecraft from the airplane. The unloading and delivery operation took more than five years due to adverse weather conditions in the vicinity of Plesetsk.
A Russian Kosmos-3M launch vehicle is to place the first of Germany's five SAR-Lupe satellites into orbit before the end of December, Kuznetsov said.