On April 10, a postcard with a commemorative stamp dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of the launch of the Ekran satellite was put into postal circulation in the Space Exploration series

On October 26 of 1976, a Proton-K launch vehicle carrying a new television broadcasting satellite Ekran was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first experimental live broadcasting from Moscow using this satellite was carried out on November 7 of 1976.

“Ekran” was the name given to a series of Soviet artificial Earth satellites and a satellite television system designed to retransmit color and black-and-white programs from the central television network to a network of multi-access receivers located in settlements across Siberia and the Far North.

The Ekran spacecraft were placed in a near-stationary circular orbit. In addition to the improved relay equipment, the satellite was equipped with a three-axis system of precise orientation towards the Earth of the combined type with a flywheel and a jet engine using compressed gas as a working body. The satellite was supplied with a liquid-propellant unit to ensure altitude correction.

The Ekran satellite television system consisted of the following elements: a ground-based transmission complex with a transmitter operating in the centimeter-wave band (located in the Moscow Region); the Ekran satellite; a network of simple receiving devices, which, in combination with cable distribution systems or low-power TV repeaters, provided transmission of television programs to subscribers' TV sets in the meter-wave band.

The orbital vehicles of this series were designed at Joint-Stock Company Academician M. Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems (a subsidiary of the Roscosmos State Corporation). Ekran is considered the world’s first serial satellite for live broadcasting.

The commemorative stamp provides a symbolic image of a launch vehicle being launched into space; the main image features the Ekran satellite in space against the backdrop of the Earth, along with symbolic images of a satellite antenna and a television antenna.

In addition to the issue of the postcard with a commemorative stamp, JSC Marka produced special cancels for Moscow, Baikonur, Volgograd and Yevpatoria of the Republic of Crimea.


Design Artists: R. Komsa, I. Ulyanovsky and S. Ulyanovsky.
Quantity: 7.5 thousand postcard.

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