In late March, Russian company Bureau 1440 brought into low orbit the first 16 broadband internet satellites of the new Rassvet constellation, already dubbed by observers and local media the Russian answer to SpaceX's Starlink. It's an ambitious global internet project that experts say could conceal much broader strategic goals, with functions including military and communications control.
The launch took place on March 23 at 8:24 pm Moscow time from the military's Plesetsk Cosmodrome using the Soyuz-2.1B launcher, and marked the first step in building an infrastructure that is expected to have at least 300 satellites by 2030.
“The launch marks the transition from the experimental phase to the creation of a communication service,” Bureau 1440 announced on Telegram. “The Bureau 1440 team completed this path in 1,000 days, which is the time between the launch of the experimental satellites and the production satellites.”
The goal of the project is to provide broadband internet access with speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second for each user terminal and a signal latency time of up to 70 milliseconds.
The system has been repeatedly compared to Starlink, which in the war in Ukraine proved to be a vital tool for troop communications. Indeed, according to various reports, Kiev managed to disrupt the communications of some Russian units that relied on Starlink by imposing restrictions on unauthorized terminals.
In this context, then, the Rassvet project appears to be an attempt to build a sovereign satellite infrastructure that can potentially be used by civilians and military personnel alike.
Gunning for It
The dual-use nature of the Rassvet project is also apparent from some operational details. The launch of the satellites was carried out not by the Roscosmos space agency but by the Russian Defense Ministry through the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
A few days after the launch, Russian president Vladimir Putin called the launch of the new constellation “a great event,” while Roscosmos director Dmitry Bakanov said the Cosmodrome would suffer “attempted attacks” on the day of the launch.
“Like all satellites intended for communications, they are also capable of military functions, and given the high effectiveness of Starlink's use on the battlefield, Rassvet will also find use there,” says Vitalij Egorov, a space expert and host of the YouTube channel Otkrytyj Kosmos Zelenogo Kota, or The Open Universe of the Green Cat.
The size of the Rassvet terminals—several times larger and heavier than those in Starlink—may cause some limitations to the network, Egorov says. “Still, the fact that Rassvet's ‘private satellites’ were launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome shows the great interest the Russian Defense Ministry has in the success of this project. The Russian Ministry of Communications is also allocating funds for the project, which means that the state is directly participating in the Rassvet project.”
Independent Russian press reports funding for Rassvet of 100 billion rubles (about $1.34 billion) from the Russian Ministry of Communications, with the company reportedly ready to invest another 300 billion rubles.
Rassvet vs. Starlink
“Rassvet satellites are similar to those of Starlink,” Egorov says. “They are a constellation of satellites for internet transmission, but it would be more accurate to compare them more to the OneWeb system than to Starlink, because Rassvet is intended for commercial companies, state-owned companies, and government customers. In addition, Rassvet plans to reach … about 350 satellites by 2030, while Starlink already has thousands."
The real challenge for Bureau 1440, then, will not be so much putting the first satellites into orbit as industrializing the system on a large scale, Egorov says. To get to a constellation of about 300 satellites in the next few years, the company would need to be able to produce one or two satellites a week—a pace the Russian space industry has never achieved. So far, Egorov notes, only Starlink and OneWeb have been able to sustain such serial production.
The other challenge concerns the development of lighter and cheaper terminals. Until an accessible and easily deployable infrastructure exists, it will be difficult to consider Rassvet a true equivalent of Starlink. Even by the most optimistic estimates, it will take years and dozens of launches before the network can offer stable coverage, even limited to Russian territory.
Another difference concerns the orbital configuration. Starlink is primarily designed to provide coverage to the most densely populated areas. For this reason, the number of satellites transiting at high latitudes is relatively small.
Bureau 1440, on the other hand, has chosen a near-polar orbit, with an inclination of 81.4 degrees. This means that the satellites will fly over the territory practically from south to north, covering the whole of Russia. The signal will be stable in both Crimea and Chukotka and polar areas, suggesting that the infrastructure is designed to serve institutional and corporate customers in remote or otherwise difficult-to-access regions.
According to Bureau 1440, the constellation operates in low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 800 kilometers (around 500 miles), while Starlink's satellites are placed on orbits of about 550 kilometers (341 miles) or less.
Pulling the Strings
As reported by Novye Izvestija, Bureau 1440 was established in 2020 as a division of Megafon, then named Megafon 1440 (1440 being the number of orbits completed around the Earth by the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 in 1957, before reentering the atmosphere in January of the following year).
In 2022, the company changed its name and was incorporated into Iks Holding, which, as the independent Dozhd channel reports, would also be involved in the development of surveillance systems and internet blockers, which are used in Russia to block online traffic and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram. On security grounds, in fact, Moscow has begun blocking or severely slowing down the internet and messaging platforms, with the aim of disorienting Ukrainian drones, limiting free access to information for Russian citizens, and pushing users to the state-run Max messaging system, which allows authorities to access users' personal data.
Finally, one of Iks Holding's top managers, Dozhd reports, is the son of Russia's first deputy director of intelligence, Boris Korolev, suggesting that there is a direct link to the government. It's a detail that experts say reveals the true nature of the project better than any official statement: not just a constellation of satellites, but an infrastructure for digital sovereignty—and for the wars of the future, which will also be played out 500 miles above our heads.
This story originally appear on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.
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