The Roscosmos State Corporation has concluded contracts with the Academician M.F. Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems Company for the creation of the Skif and Marathon satellite groupings. This was announced by the CEO of ISS JSC Nikolay Testoyedov at the Russian Scientific and Technical Congress "Directions of the national scientific and technological breakthrough 2030".
By the end of this year, ISS JSC will be provided with subsidies from the federal budget in the direction of "Development of promising multi-satellite systems" of the state program "Space Activities of Russia".
The Skif and Marathon systems will be part of the Sphere multi-satellite orbital grouping.
Earlier, specialists on an initiative basis developed and presented an advance project of a low-orbit data transmission system "Marathon IoT" for the organization of Internet of Things services. It is planned to launch 264 microsatellites into an orbit with a height of 750 km. The launch of the first experimental satellite of the Internet of Things system is scheduled for 2024.
The project of the multi-satellite broadband Internet access system "Skif" provides for the creation of a small spacecraft "Skif-D" to work out the main technical solutions and protect the orbital frequency resource. Currently, the development of design documentation for the device is being completed, the development and manufacture of components for the satellite is underway. The launch of the Skif-D spacecraft is expected to be carried out in the fourth quarter of 2022. The orbital grouping of the Skif system will include 12 satellites in an orbit with a height of 8070 km and will provide global coverage of the Earth's surface. The Skif spacecraft will provide broadband Internet access services in sparsely populated areas with undeveloped ground infrastructure. Also, with their help, the task of providing a connection to the Northern Sea Route will be solved.
In addition to Skif and Marathon, seven Express satellites, four Express-RV satellites and two Yamal communications satellites (operator Gazprom Space Services) are expected to be created within the scope of the Sphere project. Also, the grouping should include three remote sensing satellites "Smotr" and 84 optical surveillance devices "Berkut-O" and "Berkut-VD" and 12 radar "Berkut-X" and "Berkut-XLP".
