MOSCOW, March 24 (Reuters) – Russia said on Tuesday it had launched 16 low-orbit satellites as Moscow seeks to build a rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink network.
Russia remains far behind Starlink, which since its first launch of operational satellites in 2019 has grown to more than 10,000 satellites in orbit.
Bureau 1440, the Russian aerospace firm developing a low-Earth-orbit satellite system for global broadband data delivery, said it launched its first batch of 16 operational satellites on Monday.
“The launch of the first devices of the target group is a transition from experiment to the creation of a communication service,” it said in a statement.
The Soviet Union led early milestones in the space race, launching the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957 and sending Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961 as the first human to orbit Earth.
But after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia’s space programme struggled with funding shortages, corruption and complaints from young engineers about poor management.
According to Ashlee Vance’s 2015 biography of Musk, Russian officials dismissed Musk in 2002 as not credible, spurring him to find a way to undercut Russia’s space launch fees.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge. Editing by Mark Potter)