All 36 OneWeb satellites that will comprise the Soyuz carrier rocket payload, safely arrived at the Vostochny Cosmodrome ahead of preparations for the March 25 launch, Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of the Russian Roscosmos state space corporation, reported on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th February, 2021) All 36 OneWeb satellites that will comprise the Soyuz carrier rocket payload, safely arrived at the Vostochny Cosmodrome ahead of preparations for the March 25 launch, Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of the Russian Roscosmos state space corporation, reported on Friday.
" The 36 spacecraft of OneWeb... arrived at Ignatievo airport (Blagoveshchensk) by an An-124-100 aircraft on Friday. The specialists of the Vostochny Space Center... transported all 36 satellites to the Spaceport." the company stated.
Preparations for the March 25-scheduled launch will start on Saturday.
In January a source from the space industry told Sputnik that the launch was postponed from February to March 25.
In total, three launches for OneWeb, taking 36 satellites to orbit each time, are planned for 2021. Two more are still under consideration.
The contract between Arianespace and OneWeb for 21 launches using Soyuz carrier rockets from the Baikonur, Vostochny and Kuru spaceports was signed in June 2015. In September 2020, OneWeb announced that the number of scheduled Soyuz launches had been reduced to 19. Four have already been completed: two from Baikonur, one from Vostochny, and one from Kuru, A total of 110 satellites were launched into orbit.
