A Russian Soyuz-2.1b rocket launched 36 communication satellites of the British company OneWeb into orbit today, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, reported.

The launch was carried out from the Vostochni cosmodrome, in the extreme east of Russia.

The devices launched today will join OneWeb’s constellation of 110 satellites that orbit the Earth at a distance of about 1,200 kilometers and that aims to offer global broadband internet services.

OneWeb satellites have a mass of approximately 150 kilograms.

In 1995, Roscosmos signed a contract with the French company Arianespace and the British OneWeb for 21 commercial launches of 672 satellites on Soyuz rockets from the Baikonur (Kazakhstan), Vostochni and Kourou (French Guiana) cosmodromes, valued at $ 1.2 billion.

Today’s launch is the fifth under that contract, which began execution in February 2019.

At the time, the Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) of Russia warned that OneWeb satellites could carry out espionage tasks and damage the national interests of this country.

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