Oicets Launched With Dnepr, Japanese laser communications satellite Options

[Bert]

Space Based Observing might not be the right forum but I couldn't find a closer match.

From the press release:

The Dnepr Launch Vehicle, which was launched at 6:10 a.m. on August 24, 2005, (Japan Standard Time, JST) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Republic of Kazakhstan, flew normally, and separated the Optical Inter-orbit Communications Engineering Test Satellite (OICETS) and the Innovative Technology Demonstration Experiment Satellite (INDEX) about 15 minutes after liftoff.

Two years ago, they conducted a ground-based experiment with the laser comms package of ESA's ARTEMIS satellite in GEO.

Now they will do the same thing from LEO and it is supposed to look like this:

[um3k]

Heh-heh...

"Oh, I see its."