August 17, 2021

The Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with the Fregat upper stage and 34 OneWeb communications satellites was rolled out from the Assembly and Test Facility on Monday. The launch vehicle was installed on the launch pad of the Baikonur Сosmodrome, the launch is scheduled for Thursday, August 19, at 22:23 UTC.

Pre-launch activities are carried out under the contracts of Glavkosmos (a subsidiary of Roscosmos) with the European launch services provider Arianespace (the company operates launches of OneWeb spacecraft with the use of the Soyuz launch vehicle), and the company Starsem. The joint team of the foreign customers and the representatives of Roscosmos enterprises: Progress Space Rocket Center, Lavochkin Association, TsENKI and Glavkosmos, is carrying out these works.

Currently, the specialists at the spaceport are performing the technical operations. The pre-launch tests of the Soyuz-2.1b systems are being conducted, and the interfaces between the on-board instruments and ground equipment are being checked.

Now, the fleet of the OneWeb satellites in the low Earth orbit amounts to 254 spacecraft, and hundreds more are to be launched. The upcoming launch should bring the number of OneWeb spacecraft in orbit to 288. OneWeb low Earth orbit satellites are designed to provide consumers on the ground with high-speed Internet.

More from this category:
March 9, 2020

86 years ago, on March 9, 1934, in the village of Klushino, Gzhatsky (now Gagarin) district of the Smolensk region, the first cosmonaut of the…

full story
April 24, 2013

According to press-service of RSC Energia, at 14:12:16 Moscow Time an automatic transport cargo vehicle Progress M-19M was launched from the launch pad of site…

full story
June 10, 2019

At the Baikonur Cosmodrome, specialists from Roscosmos enterprises performed a general assembly of the Proton-M” space rocket. Last weekend, the head part, consisting of the…

full story
December 16, 2020

The project of new Russian super heavy booster designed for deep space exploration is to be based on methane technologies, – the source stated. Earlier…

full story
May 18, 2018

The launch of the “Soyuz MS” spacecraft on the” Soyuz-2.1a” rocket is scheduled for August 2019. The flight of the ship will pass in unmanned…

full story
March 23, 2022

The S.P. Korolev manned spacecraft (Soyuz MS-21) carrying the crew of the ISS-67 Expedition to the International Space Station docked to Node Module Prichal of…

full story
September 12, 2019

At Baikonur Cosmodrome planned preparations for the launch of the “Proton-M” launch vehicle in the interests of Eutelsat S.A., a global satellite communications operator, are…

full story
October 21, 2014

ISS-41/42 mission commander Maksim Surayev and flight engineer Alexander Samokutyayev will perform the spacewalk on October 22, 2014 in accordance with the ISS flight schedule….

full story