During 1997, even before the launch of their first satellites (Yamal-101 and Yamal-102), Gazprom Space Systems was planning the second generation. At that time, they planned a 24 satellites of the second generation. This extremely aggressive plan was scaled back by 2001 with a plan to launch four Yamal-200 series satellites. The first two, Yamal-201 and Yamal-202 would be launched by 2001 and the second pair, Yamal-203 and Yamal-204 by 2004. Yamal-201 and Yamal-203 would be identical and be positioned at the 90° East orbital position and Yamal-202 and Yamal-204 would also be twins and be positioned at the 49° East.
Launch
Yamal-202 was launched, along Yamal-201, on 24 November 2003 at 06:22:00 UTC from BaikonurSite 81/23 by a Proton-K / Blok DM-2M directly to geostationary orbit.[8] The launch and satellite deployment was successful and Yamal-202 was commissioned into service.[9]
Mission
As of 22 July 2016, it is still in service and at 12 years and 8 months.[10][4]
In 2019, the replacement satellite for "Yamal-202", "Yamal-601" was launched.[11] On 19 July 2019, all the networks working on the satellite "Yamal-202", have been transferred into the satellite "Yamal-601".[12][13] On 16 September 2019, at the IBC-2019 convention in Amsterdam, the transfer of the Yamal-202 satellite to the orbital position 163.5° East longitude was announced to serve the Pacific region.[14][15] At the end of November 2019, the movement of the Yamal-202 satellite to the orbital position 163.5° East longitude was successfully completed.[16] After 16 years of working in 49° East position, in 2019 the satellite was transferred to a new orbital position of 163.5° East.[17]
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).