Russia this Monday put 36 new satellites into orbit by British operator Oneweb, which wants to provide a new internet service from space around the world.
According to a statement from the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the Soyuz-2.1b rocket successfully took off at 1:14 am Moscow time (10:14 pm Sunday in Lisbon) from the Russian cosmostrome Vostotchny. “All satellites have been successfully placed in the target orbits”, it can be read in the note.
This is the second launch of the OneWeb satellites this year, the previous one taking place on March 25, with 36 devices placed in orbit. Other launches took place in 2020 and 2019.
A Oneweb, British government owned with Indian consortium Bharti Global, wants to have a global internet network operational by the end of 2022, with 650 satellites in orbit. Under a contract with the French aerospace company Arianespace, 16 Soyuz launches are planned between December 2020 and the end of 2022 to complete the Oneweb network.
It is is not the only ongoing project to provide global internet from space. The American multimillionaire Elon Musk, responsible for the space company SpaceX, has already put 1,000 satellites in orbit for this purpose, with the aim of creating the Starlink network. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a similar project, named Kuiper.
