A separation in nine steps, like a hyper-sophisticated technological ballet.
Russia put into orbit on Monday 36 new satellites from the British operator Oneweb, which is deploying a constellation to provide high-speed Internet anywhere in the world.
The entire operation took almost six hours.
The Soyuz-2.1b rocket weighted with 36 satellite modules weighing 150 kilos each successfully took off at 1:14 Moscow time (2:14 am French time) from the Russian cosmodrome in Vostochny, in the Far East, the space agency said in a statement. Russian Roscosmos.
“All satellites have been successfully placed in target orbits and returned to customer control,” she added.
"Acquisition of the signal confirmed for all the satellites", confirmed OneWeb which lived there its second launch of the year, 36 machines having been placed in orbit last March 25th.
Mission success! 🎉 # OneWebLaunch6
Thanks to the hard work of our incredible team and partners, we've successfully launched 36 satellites by @Arianespace, with signal acquisition confirmed for all satellites 👏 # OneWebLaunch6 #OneWeb #satcom pic.twitter.com/HBVIdBwYE3
- OneWeb (@OneWeb) April 26, 2021
Third, fourth, fifth, sixth & seventh separations confirmed!
We're almost there!
Only 8 more @ OneWeb's satellites to release! #Starsem #OneWebLaunch # ST31 pic.twitter.com/2ky0y9z6wF
- Arianespace (@Arianespace) April 26, 2021
Oneweb, an American startup now owned by the British government with the Indian Bharti (Mittal group), has 182 satellites in low orbit.
It provides for an operational global Internet at the end of 2022 thanks to 650 satellites.
According to a contract with the European Arianespace confirmed in September 2020, 16 Soyuz launches are planned between December 2020 and the end of 2022 to complete the network.
Flight ST31 was the 56th Soyuz mission carried out by Arianespace and its subsidiary Starsem.
Several projects to set up constellations providing a global Internet from space are underway. Elon Musk, head of the space company SpaceX who sent Thomas Pesquet to the ISS on Friday, has already put a thousand satellites into orbit for this purpose to create the Starlink network. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a similar project called Kuiper.
