Russia launched 53 small satellites into orbit on Monday (Nov. 4), a mixture of Russian and worldwide spacecraft.
A Soyuz-2.1b provider rocket with a Fregat higher stage lifted off from the Vostochny spaceport within the Russian Far East at 6:18 p.m. EST on Monday (2318 GMT; or 2:18 a.m. on Nov. 5 native time).
“The hosted payload consisting of 49 Russian satellites, a Russian-Chinese language satellite tv for pc, a Russian-Zimbabwean satellite tv for pc and two Iranian small satellites was delivered into the designated orbits and separated from the Fregat booster that was launched by a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Vostochny spaceport right now,” the Russian house company Roscosmos mentioned in a press release, the Russian state-owned TASS information company reported.
Roscosmos mentioned that the 51 home satellites aboard the launch was a nationwide report, in keeping with TASS. Different rockets have launched extra payloads in a single go. The general report belongs to SpaceX, which despatched 143 satellites up on a single Falcon 9 rocket in January 2021.
Associated: Roscosmos: Russia’s house company
Monday’s Soyuz launch included a pair of Ionosfera-M satellites, which is able to type a system for monitoring Earth’s ionosphere, Reuters reported. Every has a mass of 948 kilos (430 kilograms). The 2 Iranian satellites had been Kowsar, for high-resolution imaging, and Hodhod, a communications satellite tv for pc.
The launch was Russia’s thirteenth of 2024. Whereas Russia was probably the most lively nation when it comes to launch 10 years in the past, its launch fee has fallen since. The US, significantly by means of the SpaceX Falcon 9, and China have significantly elevated their launch exercise lately, leaving Russia a distant third within the international launch charts.
Russia nonetheless participates within the Worldwide House Station and has launched Progress resupply and Soyuz crewed missions to the ISS this yr.
