K-496 ''Borisoglebsk'' is a Russian advanced

Delta III Delta III was an expendable launch vehicle made by Boeing. The vehicle was developed from the highly-successful Delta II to help meet the launch demand of larger satellites. The first Delta III launch was on August 26, 1998. Of its three flights ...

SSBN nuclear

submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

. On 21 June 2005 the vessel served as the launch platform for a missile carrying a payload containing a

solar sail Solar sails (also known as light sails and photon sails) are a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large mirrors. A number of spaceflight missions to test solar propulsion and navigation have been p ...

experiment, ''

Cosmos 1 Cosmos 1 was a project by Cosmos Studios and The Planetary Society to test a solar sail in space. As part of the project, an unmanned solar-sail spacecraft named ''Cosmos 1'' was launched into space at 19:46:09 UTC (15:46:09 EDT) on 21 June ...

''. The submarine was based in the

Russian Northern Fleet Severnyy flot , image = Great emblem of the Northern Fleet.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Northern Fleet's great emblem , start_date = June 1, 1733; Sov ...

. In early December 2008 ''Borisoglebsk'' was decommissioned from the fleet and was getting ready to be scrapped.

Sources

*Russian Media Monitoring Agency �
Kursk submarine (2000–2003) / WPS Russian Media Monitoring Agency
*GlobalSecurity.org �

References

Delta-class submarines Ships built in the Soviet Union 1977 ships Cold War submarines of the Soviet Union {{Russia-mil-stub