Before that, 36 new OneWeb spacecraft arrived at the Ignatievo airport in the city of Blagoveshchensk on an AN-124-100 aircraft, Roscosmos reported
MOSCOW, April 6. /TASS/. Specialists of the Vostochny cosmodrome have begun preparations for the scheduled launch of the next batch of OneWeb spacecraft using the Soyuz-2.1 b launch vehicle and the Fregat upper stage at the end of April. This was reported in Roscosmos on Tuesday.
"On the eve of the 36 new spacecraft of the company OneWeb, owned by the British government and the Bharti Global group of companies, arrived at the Ignatievo airport in the city of Blagoveshchensk on the AN-124-100 aircraft. Specialists of the Vostochny Space Center (a branch of the Center for the Operation of Ground-based Space Infrastructure Facilities, part of the state corporation Roscosmos) delivered all 36 spacecraft to the cosmodrome, "the message reads.
To date, the OneWeb group of satellites in low-Earth orbit has 146 spacecraft, and hundreds of others are planned to be launched. The upcoming launch should bring the number of OneWeb spacecraft in orbit to 182.
Earlier it was reported that the general director of Glavkosmos (part of Roscosmos) Dmitry Loskutov said that launches under the OneWeb program in 2021 will set a record for the number of launches carried out monthly for a significant part of the year.
The first six OneWeb satellites went into orbit from the Kourou cosmodrome on a Soyuz-ST rocket on February 28, 2019. From Baikonur on February 7, 2020, 34 spacecraft were launched into space, and on March 21-the same number. For the first time, OneWeb satellites were launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome in December 2020 (36 vehicles), and on March 25, another 36 satellites were launched from there. In total, the company intends to deploy about 600 satellites in low-Earth orbit.
OneWeb's updated agreement with Arianespace calls for the launch of 16 Russian Soyuz rockets from the Kourou, Vostochny and Baikonur cosmodromes in 2020-2022. Each launch will allow you to put 34-36 vehicles into orbit.
