MOSCOW, February 19. /TASS/. The Gonets Satellite System company (part of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos) has become a successful example of conversion, thanks to which Russia can be called a pioneer of mobile satellite communications, the company's press service said on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Gonets low-orbit satellite system.

Gonets has become a successful example of conversion. The system was created after upgrading special-purpose communications satellites for civilian use. "Thanks to Gonets, our country can confidently be called a pioneer of mobile satellite communications," said the company's CEO Andrey Manoylo.

In December 1992, at an international conference in Melbourne, the company's specialists presented the first positive results of experiments on establishing personal satellite channels with mobile subscribers. Gonets-D demonstrator satellites were used for these purposes, several years before the first foreign mobile satellite communications systems appeared, the Gonets CEO noted.

On February 19, 1996, the first three Gonets-D1 spacecraft were launched into low Earth orbit, marking the beginning of the first-generation Gonets orbital constellation, the press service added. The launch was performed from the Plesetsk Spaceport on a Tsiklon-3 carrier rocket. One of the three spacecraft significantly exceeded its designed service life: instead of 1.5 years, it served in orbit for almost 20 years. "This long-lived satellite made a significant contribution to the achievements of Russian space technology," Gonets emphasized.

Today, Russia operates the second-generation Gonets system the deployment of which was completed in 2015. "The system is in demand by various users in areas without terrestrial network coverage. Thanks to its orbital design, the system even operates at the North and South Poles," the press service added.

Since January 1, 2026, Gonets ship earth stations have been used as the primary technical monitoring equipment on all vessels in Russia’s fishing fleet. At the same time, Russia has discontinued the use of British Inmarsat satellite stations on vessels as technical control facilities. All industry companies use the Russian Gonets, Yamal, and Express orbital constellations to transmit vessel location data to the Industry Monitoring System of the Russian Federal Fisheries Agency.