Russia launched 53 small satellites into orbit on Monday (Nov. 4), a mixture of Russian and worldwide spacecraft.
A Soyuz-2.1b service 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 this moment,” the Russian area 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 document, in accordance with TASS. Different rockets have launched extra payloads in a single go. The general document belongs to SpaceX, which despatched 143 satellites up on a single Falcon 9 rocket in January 2021.
Associated: Roscosmos: Russia’s area company
Monday’s Soyuz launch included a pair of Ionosfera-M satellites, which can type a system for monitoring Earth’s ionosphere, Reuters reported. Every has a mass of 948 kilos (430 kilograms). The 2 Iranian satellites have 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 by way of launch 10 years in the past, its launch charge has fallen since. The USA, notably by way of the SpaceX Falcon 9, and China have vastly elevated their launch exercise in recent times, leaving Russia a distant third within the world launch charts.
Russia nonetheless participates within the Worldwide Area Station and has launched Progress resupply and Soyuz crewed missions to the ISS this 12 months.
