Russian Soyuz Rockets To Launch 2 European Navigation Satellites On April 6 - Roscosmos

Daniyal Sohail Published February 17, 2022 | 01:10 PM

A Russian Soyuz-ST-B carrier rocket will launch two European Galileo navigation satellites into orbit from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana on April 6, 2022, the Roscosmos space agency said on Thursday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th February, 2022) A Russian Soyuz-ST-B carrier rocket will launch two European Galileo navigation satellites into orbit from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana on April 6, 2022, the Roscosmos space agency said on Thursday.

"At the Soyuz launch complex at the Guiana Space Center (French Guiana), work has started as part of the 28th launch campaign. The launch of the Soyuz-ST-B launch vehicle with the Fregat-MT upper stage and two Galileo FOC M10 spacecraft is scheduled for April 6, 2022," the agency said in a statement.

This will be the second launch of the Galileo spacecraft moved from the Europe-developed Ariane 6 rocket to the Soyuz after it was determined that the European carrier is not ready yet.

The previous launch took place in early December 2021.

Under a September 2017 contract for the launch of four Galileo satellites with two Ariane 6 rockets, Soyuz rockets are meant to be backup options. However, when the first launch of Ariane 6 was postponed to later this year, the satellites were switched to Soyuz carriers.

According to a source in the space industry, another launch of two Galileo satellites on Soyuz is scheduled to take place in September of this year as Ariane 6 is expected to be ready for flights no earlier than year's end.