BelKA (an acronym from Belarusian: Беларускі Касмічны Апарат, Belarusian Cosmic Apparatus) was intended to be the first satellite of independent

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

Satellite

It was a remote sensing satellite that utilizes the

USP (satellite bus) The USP, for Universal Space Platform (Russian: ), also known as Viktoria (), is a highly flexible satellite bus designed and manufactured by RSC Energia. It is called universal because it has been designed to be operated from LEO to GEO. It is a ...

, developed by Belarusian researchers and Russian Rocket and Space Corporation

RSC Energia PAO S. P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (russian: Ракетно-космическая корпорация «Энергия» им. С. П. Королёва, Raketno-kosmicheskaya korporatsiya "Energiya" im. S. P. Korolyov ...

for National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus as the final customer of the satellite, which had the capacity to take photos of the Earth surface, with a maximum resolution of 2-2.5 meters. BelKA was launched, along with seventeen other satellites, on July 26, 2006 at 19:43

GMT Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being calculated from noon; as a cons ...

, however 86 seconds later, the

Dnepr Dnepr may refer to: *Dnieper, a river flowing through Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea * Dnepr (motorcycle), a Ukraininan motocycle brand * Dnepr (rocket), a 1999 space launch vehicle *Dnepr radar Dnepr may refer to: *Dnieper, a river ...

rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...

suffered an engine failure and crashed, destroying the satellites. The name BelKA is thought to be an allusion to the

Soviet space dog During the 1950s and 1960s the Soviet space program used dogs for sub-orbital and orbital space flights to determine whether human spaceflight was feasible. In this period, the Soviet Union launched missions with passenger slots for at l ...

Belka BelKA (an acronym from Belarusian: Беларускі Касмічны Апарат, Belarusian Cosmic Apparatus) was intended to be the first satellite of independent Belarus. Satellite It was a remote sensing satellite that utilizes the USP ( ...

, who, together with Strelka orbited the Earth and returned safely on

Sputnik 5 Korabl-Sputnik 2 (russian: Корабль-Спутник 2, lit=Ship-Satellite 2), also known as Sputnik 5 in the West, was a Soviet artificial satellite, and the third test flight of the Vostok spacecraft. It was the first spaceflight to send ...

in 1960. * Configuration: Victoria bus * Outcome: Carrier rocket failure, satellite destroyed

References

{{Orbital launches in 2006 Earth imaging satellites Spacecraft launched in 2006 Satellites of Belarus Spacecraft launched by Dnepr rockets Satellite launch failures 2006 in Belarus Space accidents and incidents in Kazakhstan