The Russian Fregat upper stage has completed a mission to put 38 satellites into their calculated orbits after the launch of the Soyuz-2.1 a rocket from Baikonur. This was announced on March 22 by the General Director of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin.
"The separation of 33 spacecraft has passed," RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.
Rogozin noted that before that, the first five satellites were put into orbit.
The rocket launched on March 22 at 9: 07 Moscow time. A few minutes later, it put the "Frigate" with 38 satellites of 18 states, including Russian ones, on a suborbital trajectory. The upper stage first delivered the main load — the South Korean satellite CAS500-1 - to an orbit almost 500 km above the Earth.
Later, the "Frigate" performed two more engine starts. From 11: 35 to 11: 37 Moscow time, four Japanese GRUS satellites separated. After two more turns of the upper stage engine from 13: 13 to 13: 43 Moscow time, the remaining 33 vehicles separated, including the Japanese satellite ELSA-d, designed to demonstrate rendezvous and docking technology in orbit.
In addition, South Korean satellites KMSL, Pumbaa and Timon, Japanese, DMSAT-1 from the United Arab Emirates, NAJM-1 and KSU CubeSat from Saudi Arabia, four German Beesat, two Canadian Kepler, three Israeli ADELIS-SAMSON, Slovak GRBAlpha, Brazilian NANOSATC-BR2, Dutch Hiber-3, Italian SIMBA and Unisat-7 (inside it, Unicorn-1 devices from Germany, Argentine DIY-1, Italian FEES and STECCO, Hungarian SMOG-1 and Thai BCCSAT-1), Russian CubeSX-HSE, CubeSX-Sirius-HSE and OrbiCraft-Zorkiy, Spanish 3B5GSAT, Tunisian Challenge One and British LacunaSat-2B,
On the same day, specialists installed the Soyuz-2.1 b launch vehicle in the launch system at the Vostochny cosmodrome. It is scheduled to launch on March 25.
On December 18, it was reported that the state corporation plans to carry out about six launches of British OneWeb communication satellites from the Vostochny cosmodrome in 2021. The contract between Arianespace and OneWeb for 21 launches of Soyuz launch vehicles with Fregat upper stages to launch 672 OneWeb satellites into space was signed in 2015.
