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Soyuz-2.1b rocket installed at Baikonur spaceport for launch of OneWeb satellites

This will be the first commercial launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome this year

MOSCOW, March 2. /TASS/. A Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with a Fregat booster and British OneWeb communications satellites was installed on launch site No. 31 (Vostok) at the Baikonur spaceport, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos reported on Wednesday.

"The Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket was installed on the launch pad of site No. 31," Roscosmos said on its Telegram channel.

Specialists will now integrate service platforms and start work under the schedule of the first launch day, it said.

This will be the first commercial launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome this year. The launch is scheduled for 01:41 Moscow time on March 5. As CEO of Glavkosmos commercial launch operator (a Roscosmos subsidiary) Dmitry Loskutov said in a live broadcast on the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station, the British side made no statements on refusing to use Russian Soyuz launch vehicles for orbiting OneWeb satellites.

The Glavkosmos CEO earlier told TASS that seven launches of British OneWeb communications satellites were scheduled for 2022. The first launch was conducted from the Guiana space center (the Kourou cosmodrome) on February 10, in which 34 OneWeb satellites were orbited.

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.

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