Soyuz Rocket With Meteor Satellite Blasts Off From Vostochny Cosmodrome

Roskosmos plans to carry out 8-10 unmanned launches per year from the Vostochny Space Center. The first launch of a missile with a crew to the International Space Station will take place after 2023. VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME (Far East) (Sputnik) – A Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with several satellites has blasted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East, a Sputnik correspondent reported Tuesday. The carrier rocket is expected to orbit Russia's Meteor-M satellite, the Baumanets-2 satellite made by students from Bauman Moscow State Technical University, as well as LEO Vantage (Canada), AISSat-3 (Norway), IDEA and SEAM (Sweden). The first launch from the cosmodrome, which is being built in 2012, was held on April 28, 2016. Then the Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the new Volga launching unit brought into orbit the Russian spacecraft Aist-2D, a scientific satellite from Moscow State University, as well as the SamSat-218D nano-satellite. Vostochny Space Center is the first Russian civil cosmodrome. Baikonur cosmodrome, which Russia leases from Kazakhstan for about $ 115 million a year, Plesetsk (Arkhangelsk region) and Kapustin Yar (Astrakhan region) were initially built as military missile ranges. Read more: https://sputniknews.com/russia/201711281059490197-vostochny-soyuz-rocket/