The plans are to create an orbital constellation “a teaspoon per hour”
At the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Amur Region, the event that was expected took place – the Soyuz-2.1b rocket was launched from it with the first satellite of the future Sphere orbital group. This is the first satellite of the Russian analogue of the American Starlink satellite communications system by Elon Musk. The launch of the first Skif-D satellites of the Sphere system was expected several years ago. The process was accelerated by a Russian special operation.
The American “Starlink” provided the Ukrainian troops with almost unlimited opportunities in the field of military communications, data transmission and guidance. In practice, it looks like this: a UAF scout saw a target, marked its position on an electronic map, and this information immediately appeared with artillery and missile crews. Hit – the target is hit. Our troops did not have such opportunities.
What is Starlink? These are several thousand communication satellites in low orbits. Due to the mass character, a continuous coverage of the globe is provided, at any point of which users can access the Internet.
Our electronic warfare troops tried to jam the Starlink. It turned out like that. Remember how the militants blocked in the basements of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol got in touch with whomever they wanted? This was done with the help of Starlink terminals, which Elon Musk donated to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Musk completed the project in a couple of years. He launched 30-50 satellites at once on his rockets. Today, the British satellite network OneWeb is being created at the same pace. Our Soyuz rockets, by the way, helped launch British satellites. With the start of the special operation, they refused to provide launch services. But the British company found another “space cab” – India. Almost simultaneously with the launch of Skif from the Vostochny cosmodrome, the Indian heavy LVM3-M2 rocket launched 36 OneWeb satellites for broadband Internet with a total weight of 5796 kg into orbit.
What is our project “Sphere”, which has just begun to be implemented? To some extent, this is an analogue of Starlink and OneWeb. True, there will be not a couple of thousand satellites in the system, but fewer. According to the original plans, by 2030 it was supposed to have 638 spacecraft, including 334 communications satellites, 55 navigation satellites and 249 Earth remote sensing devices from space.
Then the number of satellites, as usual, was “sequestered”. They started talking about 162 spacecraft, at best about 380. The system should be multifunctional. This is good, given Russia’s global backlog in surveillance satellites.
For the first time, the Sphere project was discussed in 2015. Around the same time that Elon Musk began to create his system. But if he launched more than 2,000 satellites in a few years and put the system into operation, then in 2022 we launched only the first satellite. And this is despite the fact that President Putin announced the Sphere project at the highest level back in 2018. And in November 2020, he also demanded that Roskosmos explain the delay in this program.
Why did it happen? As usual, there was not enough money. Perhaps the very ones that later turned out to be frozen in the West.
You can, of course, remember the Russian proverb that we harness for a long time. But here, it seems, others are more appropriate – about the thunder that will break out, and about the rooster that will peck. So it crashed and pecked. Now everyone understands that to stretch the formation of the orbital constellation of much-needed satellites until 2030 is an unaffordable luxury.
So far, the plans for the deployment of the “Sphere” look something like this: 2022 – the launch of the first “Skif”; 2023 – launch of the Marathon satellite; 2024 – launch of two satellites “Skif”; 2025 — launch of Berkut devices; 2025 – launch of 4 Express-RV satellites; 2027 — launch of 6 Skif satellites; 2028 – launch of 4 satellites “Skif”. What is called – per hour for a teaspoon.
It is clear that now this schedule will have to be adjusted.
The Skif-D spacecraft is a small satellite. Weight – no more than 200 kg, power consumption – about 250 watts. It is quite comparable with the devices of Elon Musk. Orbit height 8070 km.
The former head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, although he said that Sphere is an application for the complete independence of our country in the matter of providing business and state authorities with all space services – communications, surveillance services, infrastructure management, “but could not speed up the project. It will now be implemented by the new head of Roskosmos, former Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov. It remains to be hoped that he will succeed.