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Roscosmos launches record number of Russian satellites at a time

On August 9, the Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket and the Fregat booster orbited 16 Russian nanosatellites

MOSCOW, August 12. /TASS/. Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos set a record on August 9 in terms of the number of Russian satellites launched at a time, the space agency announced on Friday.

"All the nanosatellites launched from the Baikonur spaceport atop a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with a Fregat booster on August 9 have been placed under the control of their designers. The simultaneous launch of 16 Russian satellites is a record in the history of the Russian space rocket industry," Roscosmos said in a statement.

On August 9, the Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket and the Fregat booster orbited 16 Russian nanosatellites created by the country’s leading universities, businesses and non-profit organizations. The space vehicles put into orbit included CubeSX-HSE-2, Monitor-1, UTMN, CYCLOPS, Siren, KAI-1, Kuzbass-300, Skoltech-B1, Skoltech-B2, Polytech Universe-1, Polytech Universe-2, Vizard, Geoscan-Edelweis, MIET-AIS, ISOI and ReshUCube nanosatellites.

All the 16 CubeSat scientific and educational nanosatellites were created under the Space-Pi project undertaken by the Innovation Assistance Fund with the support of Roscosmos, the Russian Movement of Schoolchildren and other organizations. The project is focused on engineering and producing nanosatellites based on indigenous satellite platforms and creating an orbital cluster of about 100 CubeSat 3U nanosatellites to establish infrastructure for involving schoolchildren in scientific and technical work in the field of space technologies.

The Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat booster carrying an Iranian Khayyam satellite and also 16 Russian nanosatellites as a hosted payload blasted off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan at 08:52 a.m. Moscow time on August 9.

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