Sputnik 99

Sputnik 99, also called Radio Sputnik 19 or RS-19, was a small satellite. It launched on April 2, 1999 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Soyuz-U-PVB rocket. People from Rosaviakosmos, Aéro-Club de France, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), made it. The Swatch Group paid for it.

The satellite left the Mir space station on April 16, 1999. It was supposed to send amateur radio signals, but this did not work at first. Because of this, Sputnik 99 could not do its main job. So, it floated in space without finishing what it was meant to do.

Program details

The Sputnik 99 satellite was built to send radio signals from space for business uses. It was made by groups from Russia, France, and AMSAT. The goal was to help support the Mir space station by getting money through space advertising.

Mock-up: Sputnik 99, a "nano-satellite," was just 1/3 the size of the original sputnik satellite depicted here

This small satellite was launched on April 2, 1999, from Baikonur on a Progress-M 41 flight using a Soyuz-U-PVB launch vehicle. It was taken to the Mir space station and later released into its own orbit on April 16, 1999, by a French space traveler named Jean-Pierre Haigneré.

Because some people did not like the idea of sending ads from space, the part that sends ads was turned off before it was sent into space. Because of this, Sputnik 99 did not do what it was planned to do and became just another object floating in space.

Aftermath

Sputnik 99 was sent into space but it did not work. It floated around Earth as space junk. A spacecraft called Progress-41 helped move the Mir space station higher up. Later, Progress-41 left and fell back to Earth on July 17, 1999. Sputnik 99 came back into Earth's atmosphere around July 29, 1999, and burned up.