Russians launch weather satellite and 42 smallsats
Russians today successfully launched a Russian weather satellite plus 42 smallsats on a Soyuz-2 rocket, lifting off from Vostochny in Russia’s far east.
Almost all of the secondary payloads were Russian. The one exception known was a demo cubesat from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), apparently built by its own engineers and flown to test their growing capabilities. Previous UAE satellites and probes have previously been built by others and used to train UAE engineers.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
43 SpaceX
24 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 49 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 49 to 41, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 43 to 41.
Russians today successfully launched a Russian weather satellite plus 42 smallsats on a Soyuz-2 rocket, lifting off from Vostochny in Russia’s far east.
Almost all of the secondary payloads were Russian. The one exception known was a demo cubesat from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), apparently built by its own engineers and flown to test their growing capabilities. Previous UAE satellites and probes have previously been built by others and used to train UAE engineers.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
43 SpaceX
24 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 49 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 49 to 41, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 43 to 41.