MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. A Russian Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket that is schedule to blast off on March 20 to orbit 38 satellites from 18 countries has passed general tests, Roscosmos Head Dmitry Rogozin said on Thursday.

"The work on the second launch day at Baikonur [Cosmodrome] has been completed. The general tests have been held. There are no critical remarks. The condition of space vehicles is within the norm," Rogozin wrote in his Telegram channel.

A pre-launch day is expected at the Baikonur spaceport on Friday and work will proceed as planned, he specified.

A Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket is due to blast off from the Baikonur space center at 09.07 on March 20. It will orbit CAS500-1 Earth’s remote sensing satellite (the Republic of Korea), Japan’s ELSA-d space junk removal craft, the Japanese GRUS Earth’s remote sensing micro-satellites, Saudi Arabia’s NAJM-1 Earth imaging and communications small satellite and communications satellites of Berlin Technical University.

On March 20, the Soyuz carrier rocket will also put into orbit the first D33 satellite of Russia’s Higher School of Economics National Research University, a CubeSat developed by the Sirius Center and the Higher School of Economics National Research University and also an OrbiCraft-Zorky satellite belonging to the Russian private space company Sputnix.