The Soyuz-ST-B launch vehicle launched from the Kourou cosmodrome at 21:09 Moscow time
PARIS, February 11. /tass/. All 34 British OneWeb communications satellites launched on Thursday from the Kourou cosmodrome in French Guiana were successfully launched into orbit by the Fregat-M upper stage. This was reported during the broadcast, which is conducted by the launch operator Arianespace.
The Soyuz-ST-B carrier rocket with 34 OneWeb satellites launched from the Kourou cosmodrome at 21:09 Moscow time. The launched vehicles were delivered to a near-polar orbit with a height of 450 km. The satellites were separated from the upper stage in nine stages, confirmation of the separation of the last of them was received after three and a half hours of flight.
"Confirmation of separation of the ninth part of the payload. And this is the last branch in the course of the VS27 mission with OneWeb satellites," said a representative of the Guiana Space Center. Those present at the mission control center greeted the announcement with thunderous applause.
Now each vehicle will have to enter a given orbit independently, and the Fregat-M upper stage should enter the Earth's atmosphere after about five and a half hours of flight, where it will burn up.
Before the launch, the head of Arianespace, Stefan Israel, said that for the company this is the first launch this year from the Kourou cosmodrome, as well as the first batch of OneWeb satellites. According to him, several more launches are planned during the year, both from Kourou and from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Previously, General Director of Glavkosmos JSC (part of Roscosmos) Dmitry Loskutov told TASS that a total of seven OneWeb satellite launches are planned for 2022.
OneWeb low-orbit spacecraft are designed to provide ground-based consumers with high-speed Internet directly via satellite communications. Now the group has 394 devices. All of them were withdrawn by Russian Soyuz launch vehicles. The Arianespace press service clarified that after the current launch, the total number of OneWeb satellites in orbit will reach 428.
