Bureau 1440: Russia launched the first Starlink competitors into space
Assembling the first satellites of the Rassvet mission at the Vostochny cosmodrome. Source - "Bureau 1440"
The signal is just space
The presence of Starlink ground terminals allowed the nationalists in Ukraine to solve several problems at once. The first is to ensure reliable communication between units, resistant to interception and suppression. Russian specialists have been looking for electronic warfare keys for the system for a long time, and it is still unknown whether the problem was solved.
The second task is the transformation of ancient artillery pieces into high-precision systems. The infamous Aerorazvedka of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, along with drones uses Starlink terminals, promptly supplying gun crews with target coordinates.
The third task solved with the help of terminals is the remote control of maritime kamikaze drones. With a certain degree of certainty, we can say that on the early copies of boats with explosives, the enemy mounted Starlink terminals for control via satellite. And, of course, no one canceled the propaganda effect of the use of terminals. Everyone remembers the broadcasts from the besieged "Azovstal" Kalina and Volyn with the demand for "extraction". Without Starlink, this absurdity would not have happened.
The phenomenon of Elon Musk's satellite communications is that this is a rare example of borrowing civilian technology for military needs. Usually the opposite happens - defense equipment is gradually mastered in the civilian sector. Eg, aviation the jet engine first came in handy for the military, and then migrated to civilian liners. If we talk about Russia, then their Starlink armies were needed long before the special operation. Obviously, no one predicted that the enemy would have high-speed satellite communications. It's time to catch up.
Experimental "SKIF" in orbit. Source - Reshetnev company
Now the topic of satellite communications is under special control and among the main priorities. Yuri Borisov, the head of Roskosmos, set the task of increasing the constellation of domestic satellites to a thousand devices by 2030. This is five times more than now. To put it mildly, ambitious plans, for the implementation of which part of the orders was given to private structures. For example, in mid-August, the Reshetnev company signed a contract with the Roscosmos State Corporation for the construction of the first two SKIF spacecraft.
It is planned to form a constellation of a dozen satellites in three orbital regions in an average orbit (8 thousand km). According to the developers, the multi-satellite communication system is the first of its kind in Russia. Bandwidth is planned to be up to 450 Mbps, which is comparable to the speed of the business version of Starlink.
The Skif-D demonstrator satellite, launched in October last year, is currently operating in orbit. He is the first sign of the large-scale project "Sphere", which should close the blank spots on the map of Russia, where mobile Internet is absent as a phenomenon. First of all, in the Far North and the Arctic. History is closely connected with the launch of the Northern Sea Route.
This year, the Marathon experimental satellite will go into space. The product is being developed as part of the IoT Marathon project, designed toorganize a globally distributed network of the Internet of things based on satellite and terrestrial channels". "Marathons" are planned to operate in low orbits up to 750 km. The total number of satellites is 264 vehicles. The mass of each does not exceed hundreds of kilograms. A little about the purpose of the satellite Internet of things. We are talking about satellite communications with ground sensors and control systems. "Marathons" will keep in touch with railway trains, tsunami, fire and earthquake warning systems, drifting marine probes, sensors on pipelines and much more. In the interests of defense, control of land and sea borders is envisaged. Summing up, we can say that if the "Marathon" did not exist, it would have to be invented.
An addition to all of the above is the development of Bureau 1440, designed to build a Russian analogue of Starlink in near orbit.
"Bureau 1440"
In the list of space News The main place, of course, is occupied by the Luna-25 mission. But this is a purely fundamental and largely political project, designed to return the country to the forefront of the space race. Much more pragmatic and therefore less noticeable was the space premiere from Bureau 1440. The mysterious number in the name is "1440 revolutions of Sputnik-1 around the Earth - a symbol, the first significant achievement of domestic engineers for the world astronautics". Well, it is worthy and commendable.
The main topic of Bureau 1440 is the Rassvet-1 mission, which is a low-orbit (up to 600 km) constellation of communications satellites. As the company's engineers write, they "perform a full cycle of spacecraft development: from the "resistor" to the final assembly". There are still a few years before the full launch of the project, but the first devices are already in space. On June 27, three Rassvets were delivered into orbit by the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle. The data transfer speed is not particularly impressive yet - 12 Mbps with a delay of 41 milliseconds, but these are still test procedures. In the future, the system should at least not be inferior to Starlink. The first operating samples will provide terrestrial subscribers with up to 100 Mbps with the prospect of further speed growth.
Bureau 1440 plans to launch the first phase of communications satellites as early as 2027. To this end, at least 2025 satellites will be put into orbit annually from 150. Each launch vehicle will carry up to 15 Rassvet-class mini-satellites. After another ten years, the group will take its design form of 900 low-orbit vehicles. Big, you can't say anything. Rassvet should provide broadband Internet throughout Russia, as well as for 75 more friendly states.
Preparations for the launch of the first satellites of the Rassvet mission at the Vostochny cosmodrome. Source - "Bureau 1440"
There is confidence that we will hear more good news from Bureau 1440. One of the extreme events happened on August 17, when satellites established a connection between the Moscow office of the developer company and Fisht Mountain in the Kh. G. Shaposhnikov Caucasian State Natural Biosphere Reserve. At the top, of course, there was no Internet at all, which was corrected by "Dawns". Only two of the three satellites participated in the signal transmission. The appearance of the ground terminal is not disclosed, but the manufacturer and model of the tablet used for communication is indicated. This is the Russian Kvadra_T with the domestic software shell kvadraOS. Interestingly, the manufacturer does not indicate the origin of the tablet's processor, revealing only its Arm architecture. Most likely, an 8-core unit with a clock frequency of 2,4 GHz comes from China. Or generally delivered according to the "gray" schemes from Taiwan. But this does not negate the significance of the event, even if it happened partly on imported units.
The first communication session of the Rassvet mission took place on 17 August. Source - "Bureau 1440"
This year, several more launches of satellites of the Rassvet mission are planned, during which the orientation systems of the devices will be worked out. As the developers write, the active phase of testing the star tracker, designed to determine the location and orientation of the apparatus, is now underway. The sensor takes pictures of the stars, compares them with the catalog and, based on the results, automatically corrects the orbit. Vision is very thin - the system sees objects up to the eighth magnitude, that is, four times sharper than the naked human eye.
At the end, there is a desire to express hope for the speedy adaptation of the Dawn mission to defense needs. The world for Russia will never be the same again, and sovereignty in the narrow niche of satellite Internet should be ensured in the very near future.
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