The Russian company Bureau 1440 has launched a second group of Rassvet communications satellites, which are being developed as an analogue of the Starlink satellite network. The latest launch brings the total number of these devices in orbit to approximately 40.
The Russian company Bureau 1440 has launched a second group of Rassvet communications satellites, which are being developed as an analogue of the Starlink satellite network. The latest launch brings the total number of these devices in orbit to approximately 40.
This was reported by radio technology specialist Sergey "Flash" Beskrestnov. According to the expert, the satellites have not yet taken their places in the orbital group, but they may do so in the near future.
"In order to somehow start using the Rasvet group for military purposes, the enemy needs to launch at least several hundred satellites," Flash noted.
For comparison, SpaceX's satellite network currently has over 15,000 devices, OneWeb's constellation consists of 600–700 units, and Amazon's Leo project has 400–500 satellites with plans to expand to 4,000.
Developers from Bureau 1440 claim that the Rassvet project operates at an altitude of about 800 km with a latency of up to 70 ms and a speed of up to 1 Gbps per subscriber terminal. The stated plans call for the start of commercial operation in 2027 with the network scaling up to 250 satellites, and by 2035 - over 900. However, to meet this schedule, Russia needs to launch about 16 devices per month, which is currently not observed.
The Rassvet project began its deployment in June 2023 with the launch of three Rassvet-1 test vehicles. In May 2024, the Russians launched three Rassvet-2 prototypes into orbit to test inter-satellite laser communication, and in March 2026, they launched the first 16 production satellites .
