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Russia to launch British OneWeb communications satellites from Baikonur on March 5

The satellites are expected to arrive at the Baikonur spaceport on February 10

MOSCOW, January 3. /TASS/. Over 35 British OneWeb communications satellites will be launched from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan on March 5, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos reported on Monday.

"In accordance with the 2022 launch schedule approved by the state corporation Roscosmos, the launch of a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat booster and 36 OneWeb satellites from the Baikonur cosmodrome is scheduled for March 5, 2022," Roscosmos said in a statement.

The launch of British OneWeb satellites was earlier planned for January but was rescheduled at the customer’s request. The satellites are expected to arrive at the Baikonur spaceport on February 10, the statement says.

CEO of the commercial launch operator Glavkosmos (part of Roscosmos) Dmitry Loskutov earlier told TASS that seven launches of British OneWeb communications satellites were scheduled for 2022. The first launch was scheduled to take place from the Guiana space center (the Kourou cosmodrome) in February, he specified.

British OneWeb low-orbit satellites are designed to create a space-based communications system to provide high-speed Internet access in any locality worldwide. Currently, the OneWeb orbital cluster comprises 394 satellites. All of them were orbited by Russian Soyuz carrier rockets.