Russia launched the first Sphere satellite, an analogue of OneWeb and Starlink, into space

The Soyuz-2.1b rocket with the first satellite of the Sphere group was launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome. The Fregat upper stage was launched into orbit. Deputy Prime Minister – Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said that in 2022, 14 billion rubles were allocated to the project.

The launch of the Soyuz-2.1b rocket took place at 22:57 on October 22, Moscow time. The Fregat upper stage is to launch the Skif-D demonstration satellite (for the Skif broadband Internet access system, Sfera project), as well as three Gonets-M communications satellites, into the specified orbits. The mass of Skif-D is less than 200 kg, power consumption is about 250 watts. It will be launched into a medium circular orbit at an altitude of 8070 km. The term of active existence is three years.

How notes government, the rocket went into space on a new type of fuel – naphthyl, an environmentally friendly type of hydrocarbon fuel with the use of polymer additives. Previously, it was used only for the third stage of Soyuz-2.1b. “The advantage of naphthyl is the reduction of harmful emissions and a noticeable increase in the payload launched into orbit,” the government said in a statement.

Mr. Manturov took part in the rocket launch. He said that this year 14 billion rubles were allocated for the project. from the federal budget. In 2023 and 2024, approximately 18 billion rubles are provided, in 2025 – 8.5 billion rubles.

The head of Roskosmos, Yuri Borisov, called Sphere one of the key projects of the state corporation. “Thanks to it, the most modern system of communications and monitoring will be created, including both the existing and future space infrastructure,” he said. According to the general director of Roskosmos, it is planned to deploy constellations with Yamal and Express communication satellites in geostationary and Express-RV in highly elliptical orbits, Skif in medium orbits and Marathon IoT (Internet of Things) in low orbits.

President Vladimir Putin announced the Sphere satellite system in 2018. In November 2020, Mr. Putin demanded to explainwhy the program was not approved. At that time, the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin arguedthat the projects were sent to the government, but there were difficulties with financing. Roskosmos initially requested for the implementation of the project 1.5 trillion rubles. In June 2021 Dmitry Rogozin appreciated the cost of the system is 800 billion rubles.