A Soyuz rocket is standing on a launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s the Far East for liftoff with the next 36 satellites for OneWeb’s internet network, the sixth Soyuz mission dedicated to the commercial broadband constellation.
The 36 satellites, built on Florida’s Space Coast by a joint venturer between OneWeb and Airbus, are stowed inside the nose cone of a Soyuz-2.1b rocket at Vostochny, Russia’s newest spaceport in the far eastern Amur Oblast near the Chinese border.
Ground teams transferred the Soyuz rocket, its Fregat upper stage, and the OneWeb payload compartment to their launch pad Thursday. A hydraulic lift raised the Soyuz rocket vertical over the flame trench, and a mobile gantry moved into position around the launcher for workers to complete final launch preparations.
Russian managers will meet around five hours before launch to give the “go” to load kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Soyuz rocket. The gantry will withdraw to a location near the launch pad, clearing the way for liftoff at 2214:08 GMT (6:14:08 p.m. EDT).
Launch is timed for 7:14:08 a.m. Monday local time at Vostochny, around two hours after sunrise.
The four-hour mission will place the 36 OneWeb satellites — each about the size of a mini-fridge — into a polar orbit about 279 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth after launching toward the north from Vostochny. Each spacecraft will deploy power-generating solar panels and switch on xenon-fueled plasma thrusters to reach an operational altitude of 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) in the coming months.
With next 36 satellites, OneWeb’s fleet will have 182 spacecraft of a planned constellsation of 648 nodes relaying broadband internet signals around the world. The fleet will surpass the one-quarter complete mark with Sunday’s launch.
Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/04/24/soyuz-rocket-set-to-launch-more-oneweb-internet-satellites/