Russia Puts 34 OneWeb Satellites Into Orbit

Russia has successfully put 34 UK satellites for the OneWeb project into orbit, Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Russian space agency Roscosmos, said.

"The second in 2020 launch of the @OneWeb satellites under the contract of @glavkosmosJSC with @Arianespace was a success: 34 @OneWebSatellit1 were separated from the upper stage in nine batches, all spacecraft are placed into their orbits", Glavkosmos said on Twitter in the early hours of Sunday.

Russia launched a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with 34 OneWeb satellites on Saturday, from the Baikonur spaceport. The launch took place at 20:07 Moscow time (17:07 GMT).

Roscosmos signed contracts with French company Arianespace and UK's OneWeb in June 2015 for carrying out a total of 21 commercial launches to bring 672 satellites into space using Soyuz rockets. OneWeb plans to create a constellation of satellites that will provide broadband internet access to users around the world fully covering the Earth's surface.