On Sunday, April 25 at 22:14 UTC, Arianespace and its affiliate Starsem launched a Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat into cloudy skies from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in eastern Russia. Vostochny, which means East in Russian, is Russia’s newest launch site, and so far only eight rockets have launched from the site since its opening in 2016. Onboard the Soyuz were 36 satellites for the OneWeb 6 mission. This was the third launch of OneWeb satellites from Vostochny after the OneWeb 4 mission in December 2020 and the OneWeb 5 mission in March 2021.

The live stream switched to an onboard camera just before booster separation and then switched to animation. The rocket’s Fregat upper stage conducted several engine burns over the course of two and a half hours and then inserted the 36 satellites into the target orbit in nine sets of four. This marks 182 satellites launched of a planned constellation of 648 OneWeb satellites.

More Information

Glavkosmos press release

Launch video