The launch of the Soyuz-2.1 b carrier rocket from Baikonur with the British OneWeb communication satellites, scheduled for August 5, was postponed for at least a week due to the unavailability of the devices. This was announced on Wednesday, July 14, RIA Novosti reports, citing three sources in the rocket and space industry.
According to one of the agency's interlocutors, the start was previously postponed to August 13, but this date depends on how quickly the problems will be solved.
Another source said that for the launch on August 5, 34 OneWeb satellites had to be delivered to the cosmodrome on July 13, but this did not happen. He also confirmed the shift of the start by at least a week.
Earlier, on July 1, the Soyuz-2.1 b launch vehicle launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome with 36 OneWeb communication satellites. On the same day, it became known that all the vehicles were put into orbit.
The next day, the British company OneWeb announced that it plans to complete the deployment of a satellite constellation to provide global coverage by June 2022.
At the end of May, it was reported that Roscosmos plans to carry out about six launches of British OneWeb communication satellites from Vostochny in 2021.
In June 2015, Roscosmos signed a contract with Arianespace for 21 commercial launches of 672 communication satellites of the space system of the British company OneWeb on Soyuz-2 launch vehicles with Fregat family upper stages. The contract value was $1.2 billion.
