Elektro-L
Shape built from published dimensions and pictures; details simplified.
Turn it in 3D
Open the 3D viewer (www.spaceradar.ai).
The viewer loads when you ask: about 700 kB the first time (three.js and the model), much less after.
Pictures 4
Three-quarter view
From the side
From behind
From above
About this model
Elektro-L is one of the 203 3D models Space Radar made itself: a satellite, built in code from published dimensions and photographs, with no image-to-3D generator and no one else’s mesh.
Shape built from published dimensions and pictures; details simplified. It has 10,638 triangles in a 64 kB glTF file, and is 4.5 m across at full scale.
On Space Radar’s live map it is drawn for 4 catalogued objects, each where its published orbit puts it now. Open it on the map.
Dimensions and their sources
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Solar array | 8.17 m² |
| Wing long | 4.48 m |
| Wing wide | 1.83 m |
| Deck across | 1.9 m |
| Dish | 1.15 m |
Russian Wikipedia, ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Электро-Л, OPENED 2026-11-05: 'Система электропитания состоит из одного фотоэлектрического генератора площадью 8,17 м²' (ONE generator); the infobox: 'Длина 5,5 м', 'Ширина 2,5 м', 'трёхкаскадные GaAs, 8,2 м²'; 'платформа «Навигатор», выполненная в негерметичном исполнении'; 'Стартовая масса аппарата — 1797 кг'; 'Масса комплекса целевой аппаратуры составляет 550 кг'. THE ENGLISH ARTICLE GIVES NO DIMENSIONS. THE TWO CITED LENGTHS ARE NOT SAID TO BELONG TO ANYTHING (the infobox gives no axis), and the file is built to neither: the area is the only cited number that fixes a size. READ OFF THE THREE PHOTOGRAPHS: one wing of three equal panels whose long side is 2.45 times its width, so 8.17 m2 makes it 1.83 m by 4.48 m; the white Earth deck as wide as the wing (1.9 m across its flats); the two dishes about 0.6 of the deck, so 1.15 m. (Half the deck, the yoke and the wing make 5.5 m from the body's axis to the wing's tip, which is a reading of the infobox's length and not a citation.) OURS: every other size and place, the body's height, the units' sizes, the helix's, the engine pods' and the louvres', the eight frame struts and the colours.
How it was made
Built in code from published dimensions and photographs, with no image-to-3D generator and no one else’s mesh. 3D model: built by Space Radar from the published solar-array area and photographs of the Elektro-L model by Pavel Kolotilov (CC BY-SA 3.0), Bin im Garten (CC BY-SA 3.0) and MKonair (CC BY-SA 2.0).
The full record
built by this project in code (the private tool model-from-images: assemble.py, from a yaml of primitives), from the cited dimensions and the pictures under `references`; no image-to-3D model was used, and no published mesh (NASA's 3D Resources on GitHub, 1 583 paths read 2026-11-05, has only RADARSAT-1 of the radar craft and none of this one; the survey of 2026-11-05 found no agency model of it under usable terms)
Where the map uses it. NORAD 41105, 44903, 55506 and 67756 (ELEKTRO-L 2 to 5), in the whole active catalogue: NPO Lavochkin's Russian geostationary weather satellites on the Navigator platform, which wore the geostationary bus; public #997. No page says the series differs in drawing; ELEKTRO-L 1 (2011) is not in the live catalogue
Licence note. CC BY-SA 3.0 and CC BY-SA 2.0 (three visitors' photographs of a 1:5 model of Elektro-L at trade shows, the layout read off them: looked at, with credit, in the way the DLR photographs are for Sentinel-1; nothing of the pictures is in the file); the shape is this project's, under this repository's licence, built from published numbers (facts). NO LOGO AND NO LETTERING is on the mesh (the model's placard carries its maker's name and the file does not).
References 3
What the shape was compared with. None of these pictures is in the file.
- Model of Electro-L Meteo-satellite, Paris Air Show 2011Pavel Kolotilov (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)CC BY-SA 3.0 (Pavel Kolotilov; the Commons API's LicenseShortName, read 2026-11-05)
- ILA Berlin 2012 PD 062Bin im Garten (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)CC BY-SA 3.0 (Bin im Garten; the Commons API's LicenseShortName, read 2026-11-05)
- Electro-L Cebit 2011MKonair (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)CC BY-SA 2.0 (MKonair; the Commons API's LicenseShortName, read 2026-11-05)
Use it
The model is under the MIT licence: use it, change it and share it, in any project, also a paid one. Keep the credit:
Elektro-L 3D model by Space Radar (spaceradar.ai), MIT LicenseAny glTF 2.0 loader that reads meshopt compression (EXT_meshopt_compression) opens the file: three.js with its MeshoptDecoder, Babylon.js, model-viewer. Tools such as glTF-Transform can write an uncompressed copy.
Or embed the viewer in your page:
<iframe src="https://www.spaceradar.ai/model/?id=elektro-l" title="Elektro-L, 3D model by Space Radar" width="600" height="450" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:100%"></iframe>Related models
FORMOSAT-7 (COSMIC-2)
Shape built from published dimensions and pictures; details simplified.
