Location: Saint Petersburg.
Peter the Great established the Saint Petersburg Arsenal on October 4, 1711. Arsenal's experience with rocketry began as early as 1826, but the primary emphasis remained on artillery. On 21 November 1949 TsKB-7 was established within the Arsenal to develop advanced naval artillery systems. On 15 April 1959 the bureau was given the priority task of perfecting large solid rocket motors for naval and land-based long-range ballistic missiles. They also had complete design responsibility for several solid propellant submarine-launched ballistic missiles, none of which entered full production. On 30 April 1969 the bureau was put in charge of completing development and putting into production Chelomei's US naval reconnaissance and tracking satellite series. By the 1980's they were upgraded to full satellite design bureau status and were completing new design spacecraft.
Passive naval electronic intelligence satellite. The satellite was placed in an initial 147 km x 442 km orbit at 65 degree inclination. The US-PM's propulsion module fired at apogee to circularize the orbit. Replaced the only previous remaining US-PM satellite which ended operations in November and reentered earlier in December 1999.
Signal Intelligence Satellite. Launch delayed December 19. The booster put the satellite into an initial orbit of 145 x 405 km x 65.0 deg. At apogee the satellite ignited its own propulsion system to increase velocity by about 70-80 m/s and circularize the orbit.