MOSCOW, November 17. /TASS/. Russia is set to deploy the first orbital cluster of Marathon IoT satellites for the Internet of things from 2026, Roscosmos Head Yury Borisov told TASS on Thursday.

"The first demonstrator of the Marathon low-orbit system will go into space in 2023 and from 2026 the first cluster of 137 space vehicles will be deployed," the Roscosmos chief said.

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos has launched priority work to create new Marathon IoT and Skif broadband Internet access multi-satellite constellations to operate under the Sfera program. The program also envisages the launch of Berkut satellites for panoramic and high-resolution optical imagery and radar observation, he said.

The Skif-D was the first satellite launched under the Sfera program. It was orbited after its launch from the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East on October 22. The Sfera program envisages the launch of communications and Earth’s remote sensing satellites. It will embrace five satellite clusters providing telecoms services and another five constellations offering observation services.