The Russian Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying 36 new British satellites takes off from its launch pad at the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on December 27, 2021 (Russian Space Agency Roscosmos / AFP / Aleksander Pantyukhin)
A Russian Soyuz rocket launched into space on Monday 36 new satellites from the British operator OneWeb, which is deploying a constellation to provide high-speed internet anywhere in the world.
“TAKE OFF!”, Announced on Twitter the Russian space agency Roscosmos after the launch of the rocket operated by the European Arianespace from the Russian cosmodrome of Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, at 13:10 GMT.
This is the eighth launch of OneWeb satellites this year. A total of 394 satellites will now be in orbit for this constellation, which will eventually have around 650.
OneWeb, owned by the British government with the Indian Bharti, foresees an operational global internet at the end of 2022. Under a contract with Arianespace confirmed in September 2020, 16 Soyuz shots are planned between December 2020 and the end of 2022 to complete the network .
Several projects with a view to setting up constellations providing space and a global internet are in progress.
The American billionaire Elon Musk, head of the space company SpaceX, has already put into orbit for this purpose more than 1,500 satellites to create the Starlink network.
Amazon founder American Jeff Bezos has a similar project called Kuiper.
Russia wants to stay in the space race and has multiplied ambitious projects ranging from space tourism to the construction of its own station in orbit to replace its aging segment on the ISS.
© 2021 AFP
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