Russia To Carry Out Country's 1st Space Launch Of 2019 On February 20 - Source

Russia is expected to launch its first spacecraft of the current year on February 20, placing the first batch of the UK OneWeb communication satellites into the Earth's orbit with the help of a Soyuz carrier rocket, a source in the space industry told Sputnik on Monday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th January, 2019) Russia is expected to launch its first spacecraft of the current year on February 20, placing the first batch of the UK OneWeb communication satellites into the Earth's orbit with the help of a Soyuz carrier rocket, a source in the space industry told Sputnik on Monday.

In December 2018, a source in the aerospace industry told Sputnik that the launch of the first OneWeb satellites from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana's commune of Kourou, initially scheduled for February 7, had been postponed by about two weeks.

"The launch of the Soyuz rocket is planned to take place at 12:37 a.m. Moscow time on February 20 [21:37 GMT February 19]. The first [constellation] of the UK OneWeb communication satellites is expected to be put into orbit," the source said.

Russia's State Space Corporation Roscosmos has a contract with French company Arianespace and OneWeb to put 672 satellites into orbit over the course of 21 commercial Soyuz launches from the Kourou, Baikonur and Vostochny cosmodromes.

The satellites are part of a OneWeb project aimed at creating a constellation of hundreds of communication satellites that will provide broadband internet access worldwide. OneWeb also regards Russia as one of the potential markets for its broadband Internet services but has had difficulties with obtaining the frequency bands needed for the company to operate in Russia, since Moscow suspects that the technology might be used for gathering intelligence data.