The company's press service told Interfax on Wednesday that NPO PM has signed a contract with the state company Kosmicheskaya Svyaz, which operates the national communications satellite network.

The new Express-A series satellite will be paid for by the insurance Kosmicheskaya Svyaz received for the lost satellite. The new satellite will have to be built in just 15 months so as not to derail the program to replace the national satellite network, NPO PM said.

The satellite will have an additional channel in the L- range to support the existing satellite mobile communications network for ground, sea and air users.

Since the Proton crash last October, NPO PM has already built two Express-A satellites, which were put into geostationary orbits on March 12 and June 24. The satellites are working at full capacity. Five channels are used by Europe's Eutelsat.

NPO PM was set up on June 4, 1959 in the closed city of Zheleznogorsk near Krasnoyarsk and is involves in the development of artificial satellites.

In its 40 years of operations, NPO PM has designed over 40 types of geo-stationary, low and other satellites.

NEC Wins Russian Satellite Order
Tokyo - July 26, 2000 - NEC Corporation and trading houses Sumitomo Corp, and Mitsui & Co have won an order from the Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC) for a communications payload, "Express - AM1" in the first such order for a Japanese company from Russia.

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Energia Wins Yamal-200 Comsat Deal
Moscow - August 22, 2000 - President of Russia's Energia space corporation Yuri Semyonov and General Director of Gazkom Nikolai Sevastyanov on August 18 signed a joint memorandum on the start of the production of the Yamal-200 communication satellites, a newer version of the Yamal-100 satellites.