At 01:14 UTC on December 3rd, a Russian Military Soyuz-2.1b was launched from LC-43/3 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. Onboard were four satellites, a trio of Gonets satellites, and a small military satellite. “Gonets” means “messenger” or “courier” in Russian.

The Gonets trio joins an existing constellation of at least twelve other Gonets satellites already in operation. Together, the Gonets constellation will continue to provide “store and dump” communication services for areas that can’t receive a cellular signal. Basically, terminals in the network ping the satellites periodically to let them know they are available for transmission, then the satellites transmit any stored data intended for that terminal. This is in contrast to most commercial communications satellites which don’t store any data aboard but re-transmit it back to the Earth as soon as it is received.

Current uses of the Gonets network include sending and receiving messages or data globally — including pump stations for gas and oil pipelines, tracking cargo containers on ships, and communications for humans in really remote areas.

According to Roscosmos, the passenger satellite, ERA-1, is a “nanoscale service platform developed for the Russian Defence Ministry, designed for testing advanced micro-devices and orientation and astrogation microsystems.” No other information was released about the smallsat.

As expected, there was no live broadcast. Head of Roscosmos Dimitri Rozgozin later confirmed via Twitter the satellites were in orbit.

More Information

Roscosmos press release 

Russian Spaceweb article 

Russian News Agency article 

NASA Spaceflight article 

ERA 1 info page (Gunter’s Space Page)

Gonets-M info page (Gunter’s Space Page)