Bars-M replaces Bars
In 2007, the Russia's flagship space cartography project was restarted under name Bars-M. The Ministry of Defense again awarded a contract for the project to TsSKB Progress on October 12 and the active development of the satellite took place from 2008 to 2013. The first mockups of the spacecraft were prepared for tests in 2009. This time, key components of the satellite were to be built inside Russia.
In the middle of 2008, the commander of strategic rocket forces, which apparently hoped to use maps based on the satellite's data for targeting its ICBMs, reportedly signed off on a preliminary design of the Bars-M project. Sometimes later, TsSKB Progress eventually won a federal tender for the project.
Open Russian records on federal procurements indicate that six such satellites had been ordered. In 2011, the federal government sanctioned an 18-month upgrade of Building 6 "V" at TsSKB Progress in Samara. The renovation would enable the parallel assembly of two Bars-M satellites per year in the clean-room environment required by sensitive optical sensors onboard the spacecraft.
Civilian Bars-M
In 2011, a document summarizing remote-sensing missions developed by the Russian space agency, Roskosmos, listed the Bars-M satellite scheduled for launch at the end of 2014. Two more Bars-Ms were expected to follow at the end of 2016 and the middle of 2018.
Possibly, the document refered to the same Bars-M spacecraft, which could be funded jointly by the Ministry of Defense and Roskosmos. However, at the beginning of 2013, Bars-M was mentioned among nine other projects slated for budget cuts at Roskosmos. (733)
Around the same time, Roskosmos documents revealed plans for Kartograph-OE satellites, which could be a civilian version of the Bars-M or some sort of a replacement model. As of 2011, two pairs of Kartograph-OE with optical payloads were planned for launch from 2015 to 2020 and two radar-carrying versions were to fly in 2017 and 2018. (734) As of 2014, only optical Kartograph satellites were promised for launch in 2017 and 2018. (730)
New design
The Bars-M spacecraft received a new development index -- 14F148. The four-ton satellite became the first spacecraft developed at TsSKB Progress almost entirely with computer-assisted design. Bars-M also became the company's first satellite featuring an unpressurized body. As a result, it promised to extend the operational life span of the satellite, since in the past, the main limiting factor for satellites had been the loss of pressure and subsequent failure of internal systems under harsh temperature and vacuum conditions. The unpressurized design could also reduce the overall mass of the spacecraft.
The new architecture of the Bars-M satellite featured three main components:
Payload Module, MTsA (from Russian Modul Tselevoy Apparatury);
Service Module, MSS (from Modul Sluzhebnykh Sistem);
Propulsion System, SVIT (from Sistema Vydachi Impulsa Tyag);
The SVIT propulsion system would be installed inside the MSS service module and could be installed inside the MSS during the assembly via its bottom bulkhead. (737) The SVIT propulsion seemingly derived from previous engine units propelling the Yantar, Kometa, Resurs-DK, Resurs-P and Persona satellites.
The SVIT features four main orbit-correction engines, KTD, developed at Isaev KB Khimmash in Korolev and 12 small attitude-control thrusters, provided by NII Khimmash in Nizhnyaya Salda. Four tanks include a one pair for 50 kilograms of fuel (hydrazine) and another pair for oxidizer (nitrogen tetroxide).
Four cooling radiators, RO, are attached to the four sides of the aluminum structure of the MSS module, forming the box-shaped enclosure of the service module. The payload is attached to the top of the MSS' upper bulkhead.
First developed for the Bars-M project, the MSS module later became the basis for the Obzor-R radar-carrying satellite.
Karat telescope payload