The state corporation Roscosmos wants to create a high-quality satellite network covering the whole world. The corresponding project of the global high-speed Internet access system will be presented on May 22, according to the announcement of the state corporation. Thus, Russia can create a competitor to OneWeb Satellites - a joint project of Airbus and OneWeb, the European medium orbital system O3b, supervised by the SES corporation, as well as Starlink from the American company SpaceX, whose head is Elon Musk. The concept of a new radar satellite system was developed by TsNIIMash.
Roscosmos CEO Igor Komarov will speak at the presentation. It will be moderated by Anton Zhiganov, executive director for business development and commercialization of the corporation.
"A project will be presented to create a national system for covering the Earth's territory with high-speed Internet access and providing a continuous communication channel for unmanned vehicles, the Internet of Things and secure data transmission," the announcement says.
According to Zhiganov, the Roscosmos project will be able to complement the OneWeb system and will become the next stage in the development of Russia's space communication systems. The expert stressed that, while creating a national Internet access system, Roscosmos does not refuse further cooperation with international partners in OneWeb.
As it became known from various sources, we are talking about a project of a global multifunctional information satellite system (GMISS). Initially, the initiative to create the system belongs to the Russian Space Systems company.
According to earlier reports, the project will require 299 billion rubles until 2020. To resolve the issue, a consortium with the participation of Roscosmos, Vnesheconombank and other organizations must be created by June 2018. The first phase of development work with the development and manufacture of prototypes of system components should be completed by the end of 2020.
The British OneWeb system will be built on the basis of 672 satellites located in two circular orbits (800 and 950 kilometers). In addition, it is planned to build gateway stations that will distribute the Internet in the served territories. Initially, it is planned to build 50 stations. In the future, they should be located at a distance of about 2500 kilometers from each other around the world.
OneWeb LLC plans to raise up to $ 3 billion in private capital and has already secured the support of many influential corporations to manufacture satellites (including backup ones), pay for launch services and build a ground terminal and a control center.
Promotional video:
In addition to OneWeb, competing projects are actively being implemented. For example, Soyuz rockets from the Kuru cosmodrome have already three times put into orbit four satellites of the O3b medium-orbital system. They are also designed to provide high speed internet. This is a European system operated by the SES Corporation. According to the program plan, the next launch is scheduled for 2019. The cost of the O3b system is estimated at one billion dollars.
Of course, Starlink is also worth mentioning, SpaceX's high-speed satellite internet project. Its actual implementation began on February 22, 2018: two test satellites, Tintin-A and Tintin-B, were launched into orbit using the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. In general, Elon Musk's company is going to launch about 12 thousand satellites. The company itself estimated the costs of the Starlink project at $ 10 billion, but outside experts considered these figures too optimistic.
Nikolay Khizhnyak