Russian communications satellites will provide Internet to the entire country

The project to create a “Russian Starlink” was developed by the domestic company Bureau 1440 (part of X Holding). The name was not taken by chance: this is exactly how many revolutions around the Earth the Soviet satellite Sputnik-1 made, being in orbit of the planet for 92 days. 1440 revolutions of Sputnik-1 around the Earth is a symbol, the first significant achievement of domestic engineers for the world cosmonautics. An opportunity to pay tribute to the past and, by combining the fundamental knowledge of the domestic space school with new approaches and technologies, to give subscribers previously unattainable opportunities,” according to the company’s website. The Rassvet-1 mission launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in June 2023. Over the course of several months, a team of engineers successfully completed maneuvers for constructing and maintaining satellites in orbit, testing the operation of batteries and solar batteries, a flywheel engine, and much more. But the most important test took place at the end of the year - the installation of satellite communications between ground subscribers. Russian engineers managed to establish the speed receiving data from satellite: 48 Mbit/s, delay - 38 ms. Satellite transmission speed: 12 Mbit/sec, latency - 42 ms This speed and latency are enough to watch TV in 4K resolution or make a high-quality video call to several people at once. Such parameters are now provided by the usual mobile LTE, reports the team’s TG channel.

Scientists have a new experimental mission ahead. They are on the way to deploying a targeted satellite constellation that will cover all of Russia with broadband Internet. The goal of the project is to provide the entire country with high-speed Internet, including the most distant regions.

We plan to [launch] before 2027, since a lot can be tested on Earth, but without flight experiments we can’t get anywhere. Now we have created the device platforms themselves, tested the technologies, the functionality of the latency concept itself and the speed, then we will check the digital part of the payload,” Alexey Shelobkov, CEO of the Yadro group of companies (also part of X Holding), told Vedomosti.

From 2025, 10-12 rockets will be launched into orbit per year, and about 15 satellites will be placed per rocket. Thus, by 2035, Bureau 1440 will have more than 900 domestic satellites in orbit around the planet and will be able to provide high-speed Internet to residents of the entire country. Earlier in Moscow, the results of the development of the digital economy in 2023 were summed up. Experts said that by 2030, Russia could become one of the top five countries in the world in terms of basic AI metrics and, thanks to the use of new technologies, will increase GDP by 6%.