Russia's Rassvet satellite program struggles to reach operational orbit

Russia’s attempt to replicate SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network seems to be moving as slowly as the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

The Rassvet program, often billed as Russia’s answer to Starlink, started launching its first operational satellites earlier this year. Two launches, one in March and a second in July, have delivered 32 Rassvet satellites to low-Earth orbit, some 10 percent of the roughly 300 Rassvet spacecraft Russia aims to put into orbit by the end of next year to provide connectivity for military and civilian users. The company in charge of Rassvet, Bureau 1440, wants to deploy 924 satellites by 2035.

But none of the 32 satellites launched so far have reached the 500-mile (800-kilometer) orbit they were designed to operate in. The rockets that launched the first two batches of Rassvets released the satellites much closer to Earth, and the satellites were expected to use their own plasma engines to raise their orbits over the next few months.

The highest altitude achieved by the Rassvet satellites so far is a little more than 300 miles (500 kilometers). Twelve of the 16 Rassvet satellites from the first launch in March have settled into orbits at this altitude, according to an assessment released Monday by the Institute for the Study of War. A chart published by Jonathan McDowell, an independent tracker of global launch and satellite activity, indicates one more Rassvet satellite may soon climb above 300 miles.

One Rassvet satellite from the March launch never made any significant maneuvers and reentered the atmosphere in June. The remaining two satellites have not raised their altitude in the last two months, an indication that they, too, may be experiencing problems.

Some satellites in the second batch of Rassvets also show signs of trouble. Two of them never maneuvered after launch in July and appear to be heading for reentry, according to Anatoly Zak, a journalist and editor of RussianSpaceWeb.com. Eleven of the 16 satellites launched in July were “noticeably climbing” by early August, Zak reported. Three more appeared to stop maneuvering after initial attempts to raise their orbits.

Too soon to know

What are we to make of all this? What we can say for sure is that at least three of the first 32 Rassvet satellites likely suffered outright failures.

Some technical anomalies were expected. About 5 percent of SpaceX’s first batch of Starlinks failed almost immediately after launch. Over time, this group of 60 Starlink prototypes suffered a failure rate of about 13 percent, according to McDowell. With more experience, SpaceX’s next 420 Starlink satellites had a failure rate of about 3 percent. SpaceX’s current generation of Starlink Version 2 satellites has a failure rate of about 0.01 percent, according to McDowell’s tabulations.

The US military’s Space Development Agency is fielding its own constellation of data relay satellites for applications in missile targeting and command and control. Some of the agency’s first 42 operational satellites encountered thermal and propulsion problems after launching last year, and they have taken longer than anticipated to raise their orbits.

In its assessment on Monday, the Institute for the Study of War wrote that the second batch of Rassvet satellites “appears to have failed to reach intended operational altitudes.” Zero Rassvets have reached 500 miles, and none of the second group have climbed above 300 miles, whereas much of the first cluster seems to have settled into stable orbits.

However, there’s a lot we don’t know. Perhaps, for untold reasons, Russian officials decided to abandon plans to orbit the Rassvet satellites at 500 miles. Starlink satellites, after all, fly closer to 300 miles. This would put the Rassvet satellites closer to users on the ground, which comes with performance benefits. But there’s a trade-off in that lower-altitude constellations require more satellites for seamless global coverage.

Also, networks like Starlink, Rassvet, and China’s Guowang and Qianfan fly their satellites in numerous orbital planes, or pathways. Russian ground teams may be intentionally keeping some of the Rassvet satellites at lower altitudes to allow their orbital planes to drift over a period of many months before eventually lining up with final pathways.

What we do know is that putting a megaconstellation into orbit is hard to do. At best, Russia’s entire satellite manufacturing sector has produced just a few dozen spacecraft per year since the fall of the Soviet Union. “It turned out we weren’t ready for this,” Yuri Borisov, the former head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said in an interview in 2023.

Russian forces are clamoring for Rassvet after SpaceX cut off access in February to the Starlink network by unregistered user terminals in Ukraine, circumventing Russia’s illicit use of satellite communications for military operations. Rassvet had been in the works for years, but the timing of the first Rassvet launch the following month offered Russian military commanders hope of soon regaining access to ubiquitous satellite broadband through a domestic network.

It’s not all that surprising that those hopes failed to materialize. Russia’s satellite industry has long suffered from chronic underfunding, corruption, production bottlenecks, and reliability problems. Russia’s war in Ukraine has brought on new threats, from Ukrainian cyber, drone, and missile attacks on space industry infrastructure to personnel and funding redirected from the Russian space program to support the war effort.

The 12 Rassvet satellites currently flying at 300 miles are lined up in a formation to bring them over Ukraine twice per day for communication windows of up to 90 minutes.

“The existing Rassvet satellite constellation still presents a threat to Ukraine as it may allow Russian forces to conduct more precise strikes against Ukraine using remotely controlled unmanned systems and leverage Rassvet satellite communications even during limited windows of connectivity,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its assessment.

It will take 16 more launches to bring Rassvet’s coverage over Ukraine anywhere close to continuous, and the Ukrainian military is taking steps to make it more difficult for Russia to launch more Rassvet satellites.

Earlier this month, Ukraine struck the factory that builds the Soyuz rockets needed to launch Rassvet payloads. Soyuz rockets are the workhorse for Russia’s space program, launching navigation satellites, spy spacecraft, and crew missions to the International Space Station. Ukraine has dispatched drones to attack the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in far northern Russia, home to the Soyuz launch pad used for Rassvet missions. So far, the drone strikes have not landed a direct hit on Plesetsk.

“Ukrainian strikes against facilities and sites key to Russia‘s satellite and space industry may hinder Russia’s ability to launch satellites and further delay Russia’s goal to establish its own analogue of Starlink in the near-term, including for use on the battlefield in Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its report this week.