K-496 ''Borisoglebsk'' is a Russian advanced

Delta III Delta III was an expendable launch vehicle made by McDonnell Douglas (later acquired by Boeing). Development was canceled before the vehicle became operational. The vehicle is the third generation of the Delta rocket family, developed from the ...

SSBN nuclear

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

. On 21 June 2005 the vessel served as the launch platform for a missile carrying a payload containing a

solar sail Solar sails (also known as lightsails, light sails, and photon sails) are a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large surfaces. A number of spaceflight missions to test solar propulsion and navigati ...

experiment, ''

Cosmos 1 Cosmos 1 was a project by Cosmos Studios and The Planetary Society to test a solar sail in space. As part of the project, an uncrewed solar-sail spacecraft named ''Cosmos 1'' was launched into space at 19:46:09 Coordinated Universal Time, UTC ...

''. The submarine was based in the

Russian Northern Fleet The Northern Fleet (, ''Severnyy flot'') is the fleet of the Russian Navy in the Arctic. According to the Russian ministry of defence: "The Northern Fleet dates its history back to a squadron created in 1733 to protect the territories of the ...

. In early December 2008 ''Borisoglebsk'' was decommissioned from the fleet and was getting ready to be scrapped.

Sources

*Russian Media Monitoring Agency �
Kursk submarine (2000–2003) / WPS Russian Media Monitoring Agency

References

Delta-class submarines Ships built in the Soviet Union 1977 ships Cold War submarines of the Soviet Union {{Russia-mil-stub