Russia began to deploy an analogue of Starlink

Russia successfully launched into an intermediate orbit and took control of the first 16 production satellites of the Rassvet communications orbital constellation. Foreign media write about it as the Russian answer to Elon Musk’s Starlink. In this case, Russia is seven years behind SpaceX in terms of the start of satellite deployment and two technological stages behind launch vehicles.

The satellites were developed (and the constellation is managed) by Bureau 1440, originally created at Megafon. Now it is part of ICS Holding, better known for the development of data storage systems and TSPU for deep packet filtering of traffic in the RuNet. Just the other day, 29-year-old Boris Korolev, the son of FSB deputy director Sergei Korolev, took a leadership position in the holding.

Two years ago, the total cost of the project was estimated at 445 billion rubles until 2030. In total, the constellation must have about 400 satellites to achieve global coverage. Bureau 1440 previously showed a phased array ground terminal with speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s and low latency. It weighs about 15 kg - an order of magnitude larger than the Starlink terminal.

The first working SpaceX satellites of the first generation were launched in May 2019 and immediately in the amount of 60 pieces. Now there are more than 10 thousand satellites in the constellation. Unlike Dawn, SpaceX has its own reusable launch vehicle (Falcon 9) and is now preparing a new one (Starship) with a sharply reduced payload launch cost. Rassvet relies on the old Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with the Fregat-M upper stage, which, among other things, determines the high cost of the project.

Why is this important?

Cutting off the Russian military from reliable high-speed Starlink communications through the “white list” scheme sharply aggravated communication problems in the Russian Armed Forces and directly affected the rate of advancement and survival of drones in the “death zone.” In this context, the importance of Dawn cannot be overstated, regardless of cost. The question is channel capacity and communication availability: Bureau 1440 promised commercial operation in 2027. For acceptable coverage in orbit, about 10 more successful launches of Soyuz with satellites are needed.