Posted: Mon, Jan 3, 2005, 6:34 AM ET (1134 GMT)
A Russian company announced last week that it has won a contract to launch a Japanese government satellite. Kosmotras, which operates the Dnepr launch vehicle, said that it has signed a contract to launch the Optical Inter-orbit Communications Engineering Test Satellite (OICETS) contract for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The contract was arranged through the Sumitomo Corporation, which acts as an agent for Kosmotras in Japanese and Asian markets. The launch is valued at about 1 billion yen (US$9.7 million). OICETS is designed to test laser communications technologies in cooperation with ESA's Artemis spacecraft. The long-delayed mission was originally planned to be launched on a small Japanese booster, the J-1, that JAXA no longer plans to operate.
