Roscosmos Launches 36 Internet and Telecom Satellites aboard Soyuz

Russia's Roscosmos space agency announced a Soyuz rocket launch on Thursday. Blasting off from the Vostochny cosmodrome, the rocket carried 36 internet and telecom satellites. Incidentally, the satellites belonged to OneWeb, a London-based company.

Details of Telecom Satellites Launched by Russia

OneWeb is competing with Elon Musk's Starlink and Jeff Bezos' Amazon in the race to provide fast Internet for the world's remote areas. That means, these three companies are competing for satellite broadband. The launch happened on Thursday morning at 0247 GMT (8:17am IST).

Roscosmos said in a statement that the launch and separation "took place normally".

https://twitter.com/roscosmos/status/1374968730917208065

Moreover, OneWeb took to Twitter to celebrate the successful orbital insertion and signal acquisition.

https://twitter.com/EutelsatOneWeb/status/1375003684619292672

The company is planning to put up 650 satellites up before going operational some time in 2022. However, Starlink is ahead of OneWeb in this regard. The Elon Musk-led company has already put up more than a thousand satellites and is live in US and parts of Europe. Interestingly, Starlink is also coming to India in 2022.

OneWeb's first six satellites were launched from French Guiana in February 2019. Since then, the company has launched 68 more from the Baikonur last year and another 36 from the Vostochny in December.

Interestingly, the Vostochny launch site is one of Russia's most important space projects. Russia hopes to reduce traffic from the Baikonur space centre it currently rents from Kazakhstan.