TAMPA, Fla. and WASHINGTON — While Russia’s share of the international launch market has shrunk, the Soyuz rocket’s sudden exit from the global stage has left more than a dozen non-Russian satellite missions without clear paths to orbit.
Phil Smith, a BryceTech analyst who follows the commercial launch industry, said the sudden, indefinite removal of Soyuz from the market “puts some customers in a lurch.” And while “options exist” thanks to “new capability being introduced” this year by Arianespace and others, “prompt rescheduling will be challenging as these companies have existing backlogs.”
The European Union counted on at least six Soyuz rockets this year and beyond to launch a mix of navigation, Earth observation, and science satellites from France’s South American spaceport. Smaller rideshare customers from Japan to Sweden say they may need new accommodations. And a South Korean imaging satellite is at Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome awaiting a launch that’s now in question.
But it’s London-based OneWeb that has the biggest scheduling headache without Soyuz. The low Earth orbit broadband startup, which bought all but two of the 10 missions that Soyuz flew for non-Russian customers in 2021, planned to deploy its final six batches of satellites by the middle of this year using the Russian rocket.
OneWeb’s latest batch of 36 satellites had been poised to lift off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 4 before Russia imposed poison-pill conditions on the launch. OneWeb subsequently suspended all further Soyuz missions.
Russia’s Proton rocket, once a staple for commercial satellite launches, is likewise off-limits as Western nations continue to tighten sanctions.
Stranded payloads
Some of the missions that were counting on Soyuz launches in 2022 or 2023 include:
- Two pairs of satellites for Europe’s Galileo navigation constellation
- ESA’s Euclid infrared space telescope and EarthCARE satellite
- The Sentinel 1C radar satellite for Europe’s Copernicus Earth-observation program
- The Swedish National Space Agency-funded MATS microsatellite for measuring gases in Earth’s atmosphere
- Four GRUS remote sensing microsatellites for Japanese Earth imagery operator Axelspace
- The StriX-1 demonstration satellite for Synspective, a Japanese synthetic aperture radar (SAR) company
ESA spokesperson Ninja Menning said Europe is "currently looking at the alternatives and the roadmap" for launching Galileo, Euclid and EarthCARE satellites without Soyuz. The missions will be discussed at an ESA Council meeting on March 16, with updated statuses announced on March 17. Menning said it will “take a bit longer than that” to commit to next steps, “but at least we’ll [give] the variety of scenarios that are possible.”
She said ESA is “currently identifying everything that’s affected” by the “geopolitical impact on space programs … we’re not done yet.”
Swedish National Space Agency Director General Anna Rathsman said March 8 that the agency is “looking for other options outside Russia” for launching the Mesospheric Airglow/Aerosol Tomography and Spectroscopy, or MATS, satellite.
Axelspace spokesperson Mei Ikumoto said March 9 Tokyo-based company is “closely monitoring the current situation and considering all possibilities” for the four GRUS satellites slated for a Soyuz later this year.
EUMETSAT, Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, had planned to launch the first Metop-SG weather satellite with Soyuz from French Guiana in 2024. Two additional Metop satellites currently slated for 2025 and 2031 were penciled in for a combination of Soyuz and Ariane 6 launches. “We are currently assessing the situation with Arianespace and cannot say more at the moment,” said Paul Counet, EUMETSAT’s head of strategy, communication and international relations.
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| Year | Satellite (total #) | Mission | Customer | Launch Vehicle | Launch Site |
|---|
| 2022 | OneWeb 14 (32-36) | LEO broadband | 🇬🇧 OneWeb | Soyuz 2-1B | 🇷🇺 Baikonur Cosmodrome |
| 2022 | OneWeb 15 (32-36) | LEO broadband | 🇬🇧 OneWeb | Soyuz 2-1B | 🇷🇺 Baikonur Cosmodrome |
| 2022 | OneWeb 16 (32-36) | LEO broadband | 🇬🇧 OneWeb | Soyuz 2-1B | 🇷🇺 Baikonur Cosmodrome |
| 2022 | OneWeb 17 (32-36) | LEO broadband | 🇬🇧 OneWeb | Soyuz 2-1B | 🇷🇺 Baikonur Cosmodrome |
| 2022 | OneWeb 18 (32-36) | LEO broadband | 🇬🇧 OneWeb | Soyuz 2-1B | 🇷🇺 Baikonur Cosmodrome |
| 2022 | OneWeb 19 (spares) | LEO broadband | 🇬🇧 OneWeb | Soyuz 2-1B | 🇷🇺 Baikonur Cosmodrome |
| 2022 | Galileo 29,30 (2) | Navigation | 🇪🇺 European Commission | Soyuz ST-B | 🇫🇷 Guiana Space Centre |
| 2022 | Galileo 30,31 (2) | Navigation | 🇪🇺 European Commission | Soyuz ST-B | 🇫🇷 Guiana Space Centre |
| 2023 | Sentinel 1C | Radar | 🇪🇺 European Commission | Soyuz ST-B | 🇫🇷 Guiana Space Centre |
| 2022 | Euclid | Astronomy | 🇪🇺 European Space Agency | Soyuz ST-B | 🇫🇷 Guiana Space Centre |
| 2023 | EarthCARE | Earth observation | 🇪🇺 European Space Agency | Soyuz ST-B | 🇫🇷 Guiana Space Centre |
| 2022 | CAS5002 | Earth observation | 🇰🇷 South Korea | Soyuz 2-1A | 🇷🇺 Baikonur Cosmodrome |
| 2022 | MATS | Atmospheric | 🇸🇪 Sweden | Soyuz 2 | 🇷🇺 Plesetsk Cosmodrome |
| 2022 | GRUS-1F,G,H, I (4) | Earth observation | 🇯🇵 Axelspace | Soyuz 2 | 🇷🇺 Baikonur Cosmodrome |
| 2023 | Synspective Exolaunch | Rideshare | 🇯🇵 Synspective | Soyuz 2 | 🇷🇺 Vostochny Cosmodrome |
| 2024 | METOP-SG A-1 | Meteorological | 🇪🇺 Eumetsat | Soyuz ST-B | 🇫🇷 Guiana Space Centre |
SIDELINED SOYUZ MISSIONS More than a dozen non-Russian satellite missions were counting on Soyuz launches over the next year or so before Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupted those plans. The hardest hit is OneWeb, which was relying on Soyuz to deploy roughly 200 satellites by midyear. OneWeb typically launches 32-36 satellites at a time. Source: Seradata’s SpaceTrak database/SpaceNews research
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