The Fregat booster-equipped Soyuz-2 carrier rocket will deliver 38 satellites from 18 countries into low-Earth orbit.
Sputnik is live from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, is launching 38 satellites originating from 18 different countries, into orbit aboard the Soyuz 2.1b carrier rocket.
The payload includes the South Korean CAS500-1 Earth remote sensing satellite as the primary payload, Japanese ELSA-d space debris docking and removal satellite; four Japanese GRUS satellites; Saudi Arabia’s optical Earth observation NAJM-1 and others, including satellites from Russia, Israel, Thailand, Canada, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Argentina, and Hungary.
This will be the first commercial launch conducted by Glavkosmos Launch Services (Roscosmos' commercial launch operator), authorised by Roscosmos to conclude commercial contracts for the launch of satellites using Soyuz-2 rockets from Russian cosmodromes.