Foreign satellites launched by Soyuz carrier rocket reach designated orbits – Russia’s Glavkosmos

Satellites of the US, Japan, Spain, South Africa and Germany launched by the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket from the Vostochny spaceport on Thursday have been placed into designated orbits, according to Glavkosmos, the Russian operator of commercial missions. The Fregat upper stage delivered 26 small foreign satellites and two Kanopus-V remote sensing satellites to the low earth orbit. “After the flights program the Fregat booster will sink in the non-navigable area of the Pacific Ocean,” the company said. The satellites include Japan’s GRUS, Germany’s iSAT, UWE-4, Sparrow, eight US Lemur satellites, Spain’s Lume-1 satellite, South Africa’s ZACube-2 and 12 US Dove satellites. The Soyuz-2.1a was launched at 2:07 GMT. This was the fourth launch from the Vostochny spaceport in Russia’s Far East, TASS reported.