\<COLOUR 1> LAUNCH DATE: \<COLOUR 0> September 17, 1991
\<COLOUR 1> LAUNCH SITE: \<COLOUR 0> Plesetsk Cosmodrome, northern Russia
\<COLOUR 1> LAUNCH VEHICLE: \<COLOUR 0> Molniya
\<COLOUR 1> ORBIT: \<COLOUR 0> Highly elliptical, 484/39,869 km
\<COLOUR 1> SIZE: \<COLOUR 0> Cylindrical with windmill-like solar panels, 3.4 metres long, 1.6 metres diameter
\<COLOUR 1> WEIGHT: \<COLOUR 0> 1.5 tonnes
\<COLOUR 1> COUNTRY: \<COLOUR 0> USSR
\<COLOUR 1> COMMENTS: \<COLOUR 0> Forty-first launch of a standard Molniya 3 series comsat for international telecommunications; first launch of Molniya 3, a more powerful cousin of the still current Molniya 1, was on November 21, 1974.