Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the separation of the project to create a global satellite Internet system "Sphere" in a separate targeted program. This was announced by the head of the state corporation "Roscosmos" Dmitry Rogozin, owned by the family of Demyan Kudryavtsev, the newspaper "Vedomosti".
“Today Russia has dozens of civil satellites and dozens of defense satellites, and we need 640 satellites that will create an optimal constellation for remote sensing of the earth, providing excellent remote communications for the entire territory of our country. In fact, this is a revision of the approaches to the formation of our orbital group. Our country is the largest in terms of territory, there are hard-to-reach places - you cannot physically stock up on fiber optic and power lines. Space in Russia will allow us to link the country,”he explained.
Rogozin also noted that in order to deploy the group, “it is necessary to build new factories, it is necessary to create a production of the element base for space purposes with a standard size of 22 nanometers - so that these are small devices, and not such mugs as they were before. We thought we could do it. " Also, according to him, to launch such a number of satellites will require at least 25 Angara missiles, which "will solve the financial problems associated with the Khrunichev Center."
In May, Roscosmos announced the Russian satellite Internet project Efir, which is designed to compete with OneWeb and Starlink systems. Such a program, which provides for the deployment by 2025 of a constellation of 288 satellites with an orbit of 870 kilometers, will require investments of 300 billion rubles. Later, Roskosmos announced that the new Sphere program was a revised version of Ether.
Today the Russian orbital constellation of civil and military spacecraft numbers 143 satellites.